I have been closely following local disagreements surrounding the Port of Centralia, its citizen critics as well as the concerns of impersonators using the port’s name and image for their personal agenda against some of those critical citizens. I myself submitted an ethics concern to the legitimate Port of Centralia in late March. Another citizen, Jan Banevich, submitted a letter to the editor highlighting some of those concerns a month later after making public comments at the port about their negligence in addressing the issues being raised. The Port of Centralia has not replied nor acknowledged the concerns.
I noticed both the Port of Centralia 2.0 imposter page as well as other individuals have continually attacked Ms. Banevich as being untruthful about a specific topic, so wanted to dive into that topic a bit and hopefully lay it to rest.
The topic which Ms. Banevich continues to highlight and seems to be agitating certain people is that at one point the Port of Centralia’s primary goal was to eliminate the tax levy Centralia residents are still burdened with. After some research, it is my understanding the goal was for the Port of Centralia to become self-supporting through rents and other means of revenue. Those who wish to paint Ms. Banevich as untruthful about this topic claim no statement has ever been made about eliminating the port tax levy.
In 1994 the Port of Centralia was named Port of the year by the Washington Public Ports Association. In a December 1994 front page article in The Chronicle on the subject, one of the Port’s founding Commissioners, Bob Thompson, is quoted as saying: “Our primary goal is to eliminate the tax levy,” Thompson said, adding he hopes that will happen in eight to 10 years.
Critics of Ms. Banevich may not like what she has to say but on this point she is factually correct: Thompson publicly stated in this very newspaper, in his official capacity as a Port of Centralia Commissioner, that the primary goal of the Port of Centralia at the time was to eliminate the tax levy by the early 2000s.
More than 20 years after that publicly stated goal came due, Centralia residents are still currently burdened with the broken promise. Rather than continually attacking Ms. Banevich’s character or attempting to paint her as a liar when speaking a truth some people simply don’t want to acknowledge, Ms. Banevich might be due some respect for being the one still asking for citizens to be free of this tax levy as promised.
I hope this clears up this topic enough to at the very least stop calling Ms. Banevich a liar about this particular subject.
Kyle Wheeler
Toledo
