Interview with Mayor Ed Welter

The Drift sat down with Ed Welter, the newly elected Mayor of Wesport, to discuss his first 90 days in office.

Mayor Ed Welter

Hi Ed, how’s it going as Mayor? What types of projects are you working on?

One of the first things I decided to tackle is identifying streamlined processes for things. I was looking at all the applications that are sitting on the wall and I started asking, what’s the process for this? And there wasn't a clearly defined path- the city doesn’t have a process binder. So we're going to create a flow chart that enables citizens to understand various pathways. For example, if they want to build an addition onto their house, they can see what form to use, they know who gets the form next, and eventually how that form gets back to them. Not only will that help residents, it will help the city to track data, especially with things like short-term rental permits. We need to know how many permits are issued, where they are issued, and we need to keep a good track on how many nights they are being used because the city receives tax dollars on that.

What else is happening?

In the first meeting I had with the department heads, I sat down and I said, okay, what is the biggest thing that you want done? What needs to be done to make things better? And the Streets Department said that they wanted help tying into some existing stormwater drainage off of Neddie Rose Drive next to the Saltwater Inn (formerly The Islander). So I reached out to the owners and they were wonderful. The Street Department is going to tie into a catch basin and a drainage pipe that will help with the flooding that we get over on Neddie Rose.

The next big thing was from Jason Barnum and the water department. We are figuring out a permanent land use agreement with Fish and Wildlife. The property behind the South Beach Regional Training Authority (some may know it as the old Levy Lumber or Roberts Ranch) is home to Westport’s well field. We have a production well that is currently online and feeding Westport. We have another well, called Well Two. It’s very deep, deeper than the other wells, but we aren't tied into that. It's not actually pumping online into the water system. So when Fish and Wildlife bought the land there was no clear contracting for access or future growth of the wells. Westport has the water rights to that. So I reached out directly to Fish and Wildlife and I was like, hey, this is important, Westport needs additional water, and we need to make these things happen. So just the other day I signed and put on the administrator's desk the land use agreement. That will give us maintenance access to the roads. We have already previously paid to put that infrastructure in the ground and now we need to access it. The next thing will be working with Fish and Wildlife on our infrastructure build out agreement so we can bring that deeper production well online.

And how will access to Well Two help our city in the future? 

It will give us the water access that we need to build more houses or to bring another fish plant online. Nobody has submitted any permits yet, but if any of the plants want to expand their operations, they're going to require additional water access. I'm actually really proud of the fact that that happened. Because it's something the city has  been trying to get done for a while and there had been no movement on it.

Do you have any long-term visions for the city?

Yes, in fact I have appointed two council members, Tom Aronson and Troy Myers, to work on what we are calling the Building, Lands, and Parks Committee. We currently have a request out for bids to do an audit of all the city’s unimproved properties. Recently, we had a facilities audit done to help us get a maintenance track going for all of our buildings, which was huge. So what this new audit is going do, is give us an idea of what land we own, what it’s valued at, and what could be surplus. The city owns a lot of land in this town. And you know, an asset held versus an asset leveraged or used is an asset kind of wasted.

My goal is to use some of those resources to build what I envision as a real town square. So there's the old city hall, the community garden, and then the other old city hall. They sit side by side. I think it would be really cool if we could make a town square. Westport doesn't have anything that makes you feel like this is the hub, the center of town. We've got the docks downtown, which are street fronts. But imagine if we had a community gym, maybe some covered basketball hoops, a youth center, and I’d really like to see a bowling alley like we used have. I can picture residential townhouses or workforce housing on the second floor and some retail spaces on the bottom floor. You know, something to really give you a feeling that this is the hub of Westport.

A community center would be great addition. Especially if there were more youth focused activities.

I agree. Ultimately there’s the after school marine program that didn’t get refunded this year. Andrea Mirante (After School Program Director at Ocosta), is working really hard to try and bring a maritime education facility to town. As that speeds up the city will probably have more opportunity to get involved. That is what is going to create additional workforce. If kids don't see a future around them, they will leave. Kids need to grow up seeing the possibility of being a welder, a ship's mechanic, getting their captain’s license. Quite frankly, it's a lot harder to get that project moving in a direction, because it requires a whole lot of backend work.

The good news is the South Beach Regional Training Center is going to be huge. They are building that out to be a full training center. There will be EMT courses, they can work directly with the college, do firefighter one, firefighter two, things like that. So the more we can partner with those kind of things, the better off we're going to be.

Some people may read this and think there’s too much change happening in Westport. What would you say to them? 

I am just here to try and make the city better. I'm working really hard to make sure that people have the services they expect. I want you to walk into City Hall and know that you're walking into a professional place, and that you are going to receive answers and get the service commensurate to the taxes that you pay into the city.

I've been grappling with my feelings about change in Westport my whole life. Here's the thing, it’s always changing. Change can either happen to you, around you, or because of you. So I am choosing to be part of the change. You can't control how the future rolls out. But as a citizen of Westport and with me as the mayor and this city council, we have the ability to control some of it. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to do it in a way that keeps the needs and the preferences of the people that live here in mind. We, the residents of Westport are the most important.

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