PORT TOWNSEND — Thanks to surplus parking revenues this year, Fort Worden State Park visitors will get a reprieve from a $5 park day-use fee for up to two months in early 2006 –without any local subsidy.

“I got a pass on January,” the park’s area manager, Kate Burke, said during a Fort Worden Advisory Committee meeting last week.

Burke added that she believed by the end of 2005, enough additional revenue would be generated to buy freedom from the controversial day-use fee during February as well.

February would be closer to new legislation, to be proposed by a North Olympic Peninsula lawmaker, that would change the parking fee system statewide to a voluntary payment linked with auto registration.

The more than $3,000 in Fort Worden surplus revenue generated so far this year comes from sources including the Natural Investment Pass, parking permits from the city, the park fee subsidy, boat launch and Park Partners, Burke said.

Burke earlier this month feared that Fort Worden would be installing “iron rangers” — metal boxes for collecting the $5 fee — at entrances in January.

Now she will be seeking “some new revenue models versus putting in the iron rangers and making everyone’s life more complicated.”

Legislative session

The park official said she also will be negotiating with her state Parks Commission supervisors, including Parks Director Rex Derr, for free parking through the four-month 2006 legislative session because Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, is proposing legislation to end the $5 state parks day-use fee statewide.

Kessler’s bill is largely the result of Port Townsend lobbying efforts.

The veteran lawmaker, who represents Jefferson and Clallam counties and part of Grays Harbor County, said the bill will be introduced during the 2006 legislative session by mid-January.

It calls for a park fee option effectively used in Montana.

Montana lawmakers in 2003 passed a bill authorizing an optional $4 state park fee to be assessed on the registration of passenger cars.

If a Montana resident chooses not to participate, he or she can submit a written declaration to that effect, thus dropping the fee from the registration.

“It’s voluntary,” Kessler, the state House majority leader, said Friday.

“If you want to, you can opt in [to the program].”

Kessler has openly criticized the three-year-old state park day-use fees, which she says discriminate against low-income park users and those who drive vehicles.