On Dec. 11, the Port Townsend City Council unanimously authorized the city manager to sign the lease with the Friends of Port Townsend Golf Park for the operations of the golf park, but only after amending the lease in ways that the Friends are currently weighing to determine if they’re amenable to those changes.

Carrie Hite, director of parks and recreation strategy for the city of Port Townsend, explained that the biggest of those changes was to Section 10a, which now includes the following revised text:

“Once the city has initiated a site development plan, the city and Friends shall mutually develop a sequencing and implementation plan, which will provide the Friends with a minimum of two years to make course changes while at the same time keeping the course operational and open to the public during that period.”

The previous text had read, “Once the city funding is secured for the housing permitting and development, the city and Friends shall mutually develop (...)”

According to Hite, what this essentially means is that, whenever the city eventually initializes its site development plan, it will provide a two-year notice to the Friends that they’ll need to adjust the golf course’s layout accordingly.

Hite deemed a number of the other amendments to be mostly minor clerical issues, noting that City Council member Owen Rowe wished to stipulate that the city would be responsible for the golf course’s well, pump and pump house, while Mayor David Faber requested that an initial stipulation of “permanent affordable housing” be revised to simply “housing development,” to afford a mix of housing development.

If the Friends of Port Townsend Golf Park decide to take issue with any of these amendments, Hite expects that to be addressed by the Port Townsend City Council during its Jan. 2 meeting.