Oak Harbor council refines 2026 legislative priorities, pushes for more specificity on housing, mental health and marina funding

Oak Harbor—s grants administrator and communications officer on Tuesday presented a draft set of legislative priorities for 2026 that center on public safety, housing and childcare, infrastructure and support for Naval Air Station Whidbey Island.

The presentation by Grants Administrator Wendy Horn and Communications Officer Maggie Aguilar recapped 2025 accomplishments and outlined proposals the city plans to advocate at the state level, including additional tools and grant funding for emergency services, partnerships to expand childcare and workforce housing (including the Mulberry Village project), reforms to public-records obligations, and measures to reduce locally borne indigent-defense costs. Horn said the city applied for a public defense grant and "applied for about $97,000 but we received almost 46" thousand dollars in awards and still receive about $12,000 in recurring support toward public defense costs.

Why it matters: Council members said the priorities are broadly appropriate but urged the administration to turn general headlines into tangible asks legislators can act on. "If we're going to list items as priorities, we should be listing solutions to go with them," Councilor Wiesner said, urging staff to include specific projects and dollar requests the city can present when meeting lawmakers.

Council feedback focused on three themes. First, several members asked for more specificity and actionable detail so legislators can identify available funding streams. Council Member Merrill cautioned the coming session is short and "there's going to have to be some prioritizing of the priorities." Councilor Marrow and others recommended preparing detailed info sheets to accompany each priority; staff said those sheets already exist and will be provided when the priorities are finalized.

Second, councilors pressed to broaden the public-safety item to explicitly include mental-health services tied to first-response workload. "I think we should... include some sort of conversation in there about mental health," Councilor Wiesner said; Aguilar agreed and said she would revise the priority language to add mental-health considerations.

Third, members debated transportation and marina strategy. Multiple councilors suggested pursuing foot-ferry service and positioning the marina as a transportation hub to access additional funding sources; Councilor Reasoner called a foot ferry "a game changer" for funding eligibility. Staff said ferry feasibility and dredging constraints are under review and that the city has pursued marina funding through a mix of local-option taxes and grants.

What happens next: Staff plans to revise the draft to reflect council feedback, produce the supporting detail sheets for each priority, and return the revised package to council for approval and use in the 2026 lobbying season. Maggie Aguilar said those detailed materials will accompany council members on advocacy visits.

Attribution: Quotes and specific funding figures in this article come from the council workshop presentation by Wendy Horn and Maggie Aguilar and subsequent council discussion.