I write in response to the Nov. 1 Whidbey News-Times story about Evergreen Mobile Home Park. Here are the legal, and even some of the moral realities of the situation.

In 1995, long before I purchased Evergreen, Oak Harbor placed it in our Urban Growth Area. It is a Planned Industrial Park (PIP). I bought the Mobile Home Park in good faith. I am trying to go along with our city’s plan.

The commercial use will include both smaller and larger retail stores and family restaurants such as Olive Garden, or Red Robin. It will create hundreds of jobs in our community. It will give people more choices on where to shop, and take their families. It will stop dollars from being spent off island. It will take pressure off of Oak Harbor taxpayers by growing our tax base to support our schools, our fire and police departments and other community services threatened by economic hard times. Is that such a bad vision?

I want the best for Oak Harbor. I came here as a military dependent. We lived in Capehart housing. I graduated Oak Harbor High. I am raising my family here and my kids attend our public schools. I am not an outsider or some developer blowing into town to make a quick buck and move on. I am committed to our community, and it has put me on a path to success.

I have not sent letters to anybody giving them notice to move, although that is my right under law. Instead, I am paying experts, and working with the mayor and council to ease costs to relocate folks. We are trying for state funded grants. We are developing lists of locations with space available. I have even said publicly that I am ready to write personal checks to help.

Some folks in the park are uncomfortable with the change, but Oak Harbor cannot stay stagnant and still serve the needs of our wider community. I know neither the city nor I can totally please everybody, but there have been 13 years to make objections and to arrange relocation. Even so, I am working hard to come up with a fair way of helping folks when this property becomes what it was planned to be, as part of our city’s Urban Growth Area.

Sean Byrne

Oak Harbor