News

Obee to run for city council seat

Fred Obee, a veteran journalist and 23-year resident of Port Townsend, announced this week he will seek a seat on the Port Townsend City Council.

“I’m excited about bringing a new voice to City Council deliberations,” Obee said. “We need to be more focused on updating the city’s critical infrastructure, better at reaching out to residents and more transparent as a government.”

Obee was a journalist for 40 years at weekly, twice weekly and daily newspapers in the Pacific Northwest. For 20 of those years, he worked at the Port Townsend Leader, first as a reporter covering county government and finally as the Leader’s general manager.

After leaving the Leader in 2015, he served as the Executive Director of the statewide Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, a non-profit trade association representing weekly and small daily newspapers across the state. He retired from that position in 2024.

Obee was active in the community before retirement. He moderated election forums for the League of Women Voters for a decade and served on the Jefferson County Chamber of Commerce board. He was president of the chamber in 2012.

“I’m seeking a seat on the council because I want to be involved in the decisions that will shape our future,” Obee said. “I think my long history in Port Townsend and my career experience will serve me well.”

Sinkholes on Water Street, broken water mains and deteriorating streets make it apparent the city must do a better job catching up with deferred maintenance, Obee said. (See typical Port Townsend intersection above.)

“Fixing our streets and repairing our water and sewer lines has to be our main objective,” he said. “Maintaining the city’s infrastructure is the one thing we must do exceedingly well. We all depend on those systems.”

Obee said he supports council decisions to improve the mix of available housing in Port Townsend, but he said he opposes developing housing on a portion of the Camas Prairie Golf Park.

“The city’s own reports show we have plenty of vacant land to accommodate our projected population. We don’t need to carve up public open space to provide housing,” Obee said.

He also pledged to advocate for a more transparent Port Townsend government.

As a journalist, government transparency has been a strong, lifelong belief, Obee said. He served on the board of the Washington Coalition for Open Government for a decade. The coalition is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that supports citizen access to government records and meetings.

“Our state constitution is very clear,” Obee said. “It says the people of the state of Washington do not give governments the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for the people to know. That is a foundational belief for me.”

Obee and his wife Mary, a retired teacher, have a home near Fort Worden and enjoy regular visits with their grandchildren, ages four months, 3, 5 and 11.