Dear Guemes Island Community, 

As many of you have seen, the 2026 proposed ferry fare increases are astounding.  Now is the time to tell Skagit County that it should not be approved at this time. 

You can help your community and yourselves by submitting a comment by Tuesday, October 21st. telling the Commissioners that they need to take a deeper look at the proposal and find ways to control the spending, decrease the expenses, and create a functional and transparent budgeting process for the ferry so the ferry can operate sustainably. 

Send comments to:  ferrycomments@co.skagit.wa.us 
use subject line: Ferry 2026 Fare Proposal. 
Put your comments in the body of the email and not in an attachment

In Person, October 21, 2025 1:00-2:30 pm  @ 1800 Continental Place, Mount Vernon, WA 98273 

In an attempt to unpack the multiple inconsistencies and issues in the 2026 proposal, we’re highlighting this list of concerns.  Or you can read the County’s proposal 2025 Ferry Fare Target Report (FFTR). 

1. Fares will increase ~ 30% for the most fare classes on top of the 30-60% increases in 2025.  The plan is to continue to increase fares through 2028. This is unnecessary and unclear of why this continued increase is needed. 

2. The justification they are using for this fare proposal is not based on real numbers.  They are projecting what they think it will cost in future years and using that to justify driving up rates. 

3. The revenue targets continue to go up, as they add more expenses to the budget. While costs are going up, they cannot tell us specifically how they came up with the budget projections. 

4. Ridership is down ~ 15% for both passengers and vehicles, and will continue to decrease as rates continue to increase. Lower ridership = lower revenue. That is due to the increased fares this year.  The proposal fails to acknowledge this, and instead uses the lack of ridership changes from 2023 to 2024 to say that increasing fares again will not decrease ridership.  

5. Capital costs are being included in the Operations & Maintenance (O&M) budgets, which means that we’re on the hook to have fare revenue cover even more expenses.  Capital costs include expenses such as the new engines installed and all associated costs.

6. The Ferry Division has missed two grant opportunities that would have brought in significant funding to support ferry operations.  Whatcom and Washington State Ferries receive these funds.  Aug. 20, 2025 Seattle Times Article. This is both a missed opportunity, and an illustration of how the Ferry Division is not pursuing even known funding sources, let alone alternative funding. Funded Ferries in 2025

7. Decreasing spending needs to be a key aspect of ferry operations.  As an example, the implementation of the electronic ticketing system has resulted in additional expenses We will pay Anchor, the ticketing vendor, ~$93,000 this year, which is the 7% revenue share that the County agreed to. This is $93,000 more that the fare revenue will need to generate to cover this cost. 

Also the additional staffing needed to sell tickets in the office, due to the lack of a mobile point of sale device.

These and all expenses need to be evaluated for their return on investment, increased efficiency, and support of sustainable ferry operation.

If you have questions, please let us know, and we’ll try our best to get you answers. 
We know that this is a long hard road that we are on, and we appreciate that at least we are all in this together.  

Thank you for speaking up and continuing to be engaged. 

In Community, 
The Guemes Island Ferry Committee