BY: Tasha Cilurso, Business Manager

This month, we had the pleasure of hosting more than seventy finance and administrative professionals from ports around Washington, accompanied by a strong group of our knowledgeable Associate Members. The Finance and Administration Seminar provides an annual opportunity for a knowledge exchange between the port staff who keep our books and help ports act as good stewards of public money. The weather at Alderbrook was perfect, the attendees were energetic, and the seminar was a rousing success once again! We are so thankful to our WPPA Finance & Administration Committee for helping us put together a robust agenda and to our speakers and sponsors to contributing to a very successful event.

On Wednesday afternoon, attendees arrived, checked in, and were treated to an in-depth look at the work of our State Auditor’s Office. In addition to offering our members a clear overview of what to expect from their interactions with SAO, Deena Garza and her team presented on several tools that SAO can make available to local governments. Especially given the lively discussion of fraud, phishing, and cyber-threat, there was much interest in the Cyber Checkup that SAO can do for your port. You can read more about the tools available here and how to schedule that.

On Thursday we heard from the Department of Revenue on tax increment financing and property tax levies and the Department of Enterprise Services on managing risk through contract provisions.  Later in the conference the group turned its attention to the latest developments in the state and federal grant space, with Pacifica Law Group giving attendees a survey of new federal programs that ports can access, funding everything from clean energy projects to basic infrastructure. We were glad to joined by Travis Black, from the USDOT’s Maritime Administration, who talked specifically about the Marine Highway Grant Program, the shipyard grant program, and more funding streams that could interest ports. Scott McJannet with K&L Gates closed out Thursday with an interactive game of ‘Jeoparty!’ teaching us about financing port infrastructure with prizes included! 

On Friday, a helpful complement to this discussion of state and federal grants and loans, a group consisting of bond counsel from K&L Gates, Piper Sandler and Northwest Municipal Advisors, briefed port members on the best approaches to financing public infrastructure. And the event concluded with a legislative update from our Executive Director, Eric ffitch. Presentations from our event are available here.

Scott Goodrich, from the Port of Vancouver, has chaired our Finance and Administration Committee for the last seven years, and his leadership is essential to planning and executing this meeting. Beyond the panels described above, the format of the meeting allows for lots of socializing and catching up among old friends, and we were lucky to have an outdoor reception and dinner on the Alderbrook lawn on Thursday. As we look ahead at still more educational seminars upcoming this year, the Finance and Administration Seminar and our fun and information-filled week can show the way to other WPPA programs, and we look forward to seeing many of you at those meetings.