Port Borrowing is Okay

When the Port of Columbia first conceived the idea of an artisan food processing center in Dayton, a lot of questions were raised as to how it would be paid for.

Port manager Jennie Dickinson assured anyone who asked that a wide variety of funding sources were on her radar and she was confident the Port could get what it needed. She's been right every step of the way.

In 2009, the port received a $1 million grant and loan package from the Washington State Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB), which it used to purchase the 28 acre "Bell" property along highway 12 just west of Dayton. Some of that funding was also used to install infrastructure in 2011, including water and sewer lines and parking.

The original plan for Blue Mountain Station was to recruit food processing companies who would move their operations to Dayton and build their own buildings. However, the companies who showed the most interest in locating in Dayton were small, and were not in a position to construct their own facilities.

So Dickinson approached the state about the possibil- ity of providing funding to build a building so those com- panies would have a place to get established and grow. In 2011, the Washington State Legislature appropriated $750,000 to the Port of Columbia, as part of a "jobs bill," to construct its first building at the site. The Port agreed to pitch in $200,000 of its own funds on hand.

The hope was that those funds would be sufficient to complete the first building. Had that been the case, the project would be debt-free. But it wasn't to be.

When bids for construction of that first building were opened last month, the low bid put the project cost at nearly $280,000 above the amount budgeted.

"We knew we might need to borrow money if the bids came in high," Dickinson told The Times at the time. Banner Bank immediately agreed to work with the Port to issue up to $300,000 in general obligation bonds.

The Port of Columbia was established in 1958. In the years since, it has issued bonds and taken out loans to purchase the land it owns along West Cameron Street and to build the buildings it rents to numerous companies in the Rock Hill Industrial Park. All have been paid off using rental income from tenants.

Dickinson says that the 14 businesses in the park em- ploy more than 70 people. It is at 100% occupancy.

The Port also issued bonds to make improvements to Lyons Ferry Marina in the 1990s.

There are 78 port districts in Washington, and their job is to build infrastructure to enhance their local economies and create jobs. In order to do that, nearly all of them bor- row money from time to time.

Ports make use of some taxpayer funds as seed money, but that is not their primary source of income. Most of their income comes in the form of rent from businesses who operate in their facilities.

The bonds the Port of Columbia will issue to complete Building 1 at Blue Mountain Station will contribute less than 30% of the total cost of the project. The other more than 70% will not have to be repaid. Rents from the ten- ants who have already committed to locate in the building will easily cover the cost of repayment of the bonds.

It's clear to us that the Port Commissioners made the right decision in moving forward with the bond issue to allow completion of Building 1 and the opening of Day- ton's new artisan food center later this year.