Chinook voters consolidate commissioner districts

Published 7:16 am Monday, March 2, 2026

CHINOOK — Voters in the Chinook area last month overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to consolidate the three Port of Chinook districts into one single district.

Nearly 94% of voters approved a proposal from the Port of Chinook Commission to eliminate the body’s electoral districts and create at-large positions. Up to now, potential commissioner candidates could only seek office for the district that they reside in, despite there only being approximately 500 voters living within the Port of Chinook’s political boundary.

The port commission had previously adopted a resolution in favor of eliminating separate commissioner districts. Voter approval was also needed in order for the action to take effect.

Approving the measure, the commission and supporters had argued, would widen the pool of potential candidates to draw from. Instead of roughly only 170 people being eligible to run for a seat on the commission when it becomes available, every voter residing within the port’s boundary would be able to seek the position.

“The goal is to pull from a broader available talent pool,” Ross Youngs, a current port commissioner, said in a statement for the ‘For’ committee that was appointed to argue in favor of the proposition. “Eliminating individual districts and creating commissioners at-large essentially triples the candidate pool.”

No one volunteered to serve on the ‘Against’ committee to argue in opposition to the ballot measure.

Youngs said there was “no logical reason” to keep the port split into three districts, “as there is no distribution of projects into segmented port districts.” He cited the Port of Shelton in Mason County as one port district that successfully transitioned to the at-large model, doing so in 2010.

“Each commissioner represents the entire port district once elected,” Youngs added. “All tax and self-generated port revenue is spent on port property, so there is no need to delineate districts.”