POULSBO — After remaining quiet about her personal stance on the municipal campus project for 95 days, Mayor Kathryn Quade made her opinion clearly known Wednesday night.

“I couldn’t stay silent any longer, but it doesn’t mean a stop to the 10th Avenue location,” Quade said. “If there is a better opportunity to build downtown, then I’m open to it.”

The current 10th Avenue project is still moving ahead as planned and Quade reiterated she is committed to working toward that end as mayor. Quade also announced plans for an April 19 town hall meeting at First Lutheran Church to discuss the municipal campus with the community.

“We need to work to get people on board with this,” she told the council as she outlined her expectations for the upcoming meeting.

Most of the council’s work on the 10th Avenue site was done behind closed doors and the public needs to be made aware of the process that was used to make that decision, she said.

Citizens need the opportunity to ask questions about the project and have the council respond instead of having a presentation with limited discussion, she added.

“There has been a great deal of public discussion on the location and it might be helpful for us as a council to pause and step back,” she explained.

There is a possibility that the police station and city hall building might not fit on the 10th Avenue site as concerns have recently been expressed by the Suquamish Tribe and the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife about the buffer averaging used to locate the buildings because of nearby Dogfish Creek, she said.

“If we stop and revisit the decision, we might come up with a better solution,” Quade said.

Senior Planner Linda Mueller informed the council that the tribe and WDFW had expressed concerns about the project, but the city is not stopping work on it.

However, the possibility of an appeal of the State Environmental Protection Act decision for the project does exist, Mueller said, noting that the notice of application was expected to be published today.

When the SEPA notice of decision is issued, those groups wishing to appeal the decision will have 14 days in which to do so and if an appeal were filed, it would go to the Hearing Examiner about four weeks later, Mueller explained.

If the city were to lose the appeal, it would have to move the city hall building out of the buffer, she added.

Councilman Mike Regis took aim at Quade’s mention of the possible appeal.

“We have to let the process proceed,” Regis said. “We don’t do anticipatory.”

If an appeal were to be filed, that would be the time for the council to address such an issue, Regis explained.

“My intent was to get the information to you as quickly as possible,” Quade responded. “I’m not looking for a lot of discussion, I’m just asking you to digest what I said.”

The nuts and bolts of the April 19 meeting will be in the April 12 edition of the Herald.