Where does the Regional Port own land?

Port research · rick4treasurer.org/port · compiled from Chelan & Douglas county GIS records, July 2026

If you've been following the Malaga tax-increment (TIF/TIA) debate, most of the conversation has been about future tax dollars — the roughly $100–200 million in projected property-tax increment the Port would capture over 25 years, and what that means for the fire district, libraries, and other junior taxing districts. This page starts with something more basic that has been surprisingly hard to see in one place: what the Chelan Douglas Regional Port Authority already owns.

The map below shows every parcel titled to the Port family of entities in both counties, drawn live from the counties' own GIS systems. Port-owned land is generally exempt from property tax — it sits off the regular tax rolls even as the Port collects its own property-tax levy in both counties (about $4.8 million a year combined in 2024 — roughly $3.4M from Chelan County and $1.4M from Douglas County taxpayers) and asks other districts to give up future revenue in Malaga. To be precise, and because this gets oversimplified in both directions: the exemption covers the public land itself. Privately owned buildings on public land are taxable real property, and private tenants of public property pay a leasehold excise tax (ch. 82.29A RCW) that state law treats as the substitute for the property tax they'd otherwise owe. So the right question isn't "why is this off the rolls" — it's what the portfolio actually yields, and how that compares to what the same land would generate privately held. Knowing the size, location, and value of the existing portfolio is the baseline for the questions that follow: what the public already holds, what it earns, and whether the Port needs new revenue tools or better use of the assets it has. That's the analysis I'm building, step by step, from primary sources.

The map

Click any parcel for details (owner, acres, and — in Douglas County — assessed value). Use the "Jump to area" list to zoom to each cluster, and the layer switcher (bottom right) for satellite view. Zoom in to see parcel numbers.

Next steps — Rick & the community

Before any of us settles on what we think about the Malaga TIF, maybe we start here. Ponder these — Fair Questions. Not accusations — questions the public record raises, each cited to a county record, an audited statement, or the Port's own documents. Where my research is still incomplete, I say so.

1. The two-county balance. Douglas County taxpayers pay about 30% of the Port's levy — $1.4M of $4.8M in 2024. Is there a published two-county accounting of what each county contributes and what each gets back?
2. Whose numbers govern? The public record carries three different acreages for the same district — news coverage has used 3,326 and 3,226, while the Port's adopted Resolution 2025-07 designates 3,334 acres. It also contains two revenue splits and county-impact figures that moved from $50.3M to over $100M. The resolution is the document that governs; can the Port publish one reconciled sheet so everyone is arguing about the same numbers?
3. What's off the tax rolls? The Port holds about 115 mostly tax-exempt parcels (the Douglas side alone: 729 acres assessed at $36.07M). What is the whole portfolio worth, what does it collect in rents and leasehold excise tax, and what would the same land pay in property tax if privately held?
4. Microsoft's Douglas campus is already on the tax rolls. Microsoft's East Wenatchee campus sits on the regular tax rolls at $369.7M assessed, paying county property tax to the normal taxing districts. The same company holds land in the Malaga district — only one piece of it, but the cleanest test of the "but for": why would the same company's growth need its value diverted here?
5. The $4.89M in private grants. Audited statements show $4.89M in "grants from private sources" (state code BARS 3670000). Who contributed, and what did the money buy or commit the Port to?
6. Mitigation proportionality. The fire district serving Malaga projects roughly $1.2M/yr in lost revenue and was offered $135K/yr for three years, which it declined; the Port made a new mitigation proposal on June 24, 2026, though its terms aren't public. Was that set by the Port alone or genuinely negotiated — and does it come close to matching the loss?
7. Can the Port even fund this plan? By the Port's own numbers, $86M — 43% of the $198.6M in planned public improvements — has no identified funding source, and the Port's remaining legal borrowing capacity falls to about $1.6M by 2032, at its statutory debt limit. The State Treasurer's review called this "an incomplete plan of finance" and recommended the Port show how it will close the gap or shorten its project list. What is the Port's plan to fund the missing $86M?

These questions cut both ways — the county has its own house to put in order too, including getting current on its own audits. I'm not alleging anyone broke the law; tax increment financing is a tool the Legislature created. The question is whether it's wise, fair, and proportionate here.

Sources: every figure above is backed by a primary record, audited statement, or news report — listed question by question on the Fair Questions sources page.