The Port of Friday Harbor is a long-standing institution in a rapidly changing world. Obviously, a vast majority of our visitors, supplies and travel runs through our Port. In the current expansion of facilities and new opportunities for commercial enterprise, the Port must promise much more than continuing past practices on a larger scale. Many citizens and organizations are encouraging the Port to embrace these unprecedented port/community opportunities by creating pathways for a more sustainable and diversified economy in a destabilized future.

I now support Victoria Compton for District #3 Port Commissioner. At the same time, I offer sincere thanks to Greg Hertel for his three decades of commendable service on the Port Commission. 30 years! Just for reference, when Hertel was first elected the Soviet Union was dissolving, Operation Desert Storm launched in Iraq, the Dow Jones Industrial average hit 3,000 for the first time and the World Wide Web was launched. It is high time for change.

Ms. Compton clearly has the energy, varied and applicable economic development experience as well as the necessary community business relationships nurtured over those same 30 years. She has worked to collaboratively push the envelope of economic opportunities through job training for young adults. I sense that she has the moxie to guide the port community into the future. I find her views to be expansive, forward-thinking and certainly unfettered by past practices.

Please consider Victoria Compton for change.

Steve Ulvi

San Juan Island