By JUDY FELDMAN

The Port of Coupeville, Island County, and Washington State University (or WSU) say they are merely tossing around ideas… have made no decisions… aren’t looking at anything in particular.

The challenge for the tenants of Greenbank Farm is that they are currently on month-to-month leases. While they are in no danger of losing these leases in 2015, everything changes on Jan. 1, 2016. At this point in time, no one, not even the Greenbank Farm Management Group, has any assurance of continuing on — at least not yet. For tenants who have persisted throughout one of the toughest economic challenges of my lifetime, who have poured their heart and soul and financial resources into creating a livelihood with their locally-owned, small business peers here, well, that is a terrifying situation to be in.

When they hear that WSU will have offices at the farm within a year, tenants look around and wonder which of them will be asked to leave. Will it be one tenant? Two? All of them? If only one or two, which ones? Will those left standing be able to recreate the synergy they worked so hard for, that made the challenging location of the farm work for their bottom line? Or will the reorganization set them on a path of business failure?

The management group is wondering just what it is we will be tasked to manage. We have been living with some degree of uncertainty around our contract since 2012. Last October, we thought that uncertainty had abated and that we would be able to more fully act on the momentum we have been building. Yet, starting in February, negotiations with the port have drawn out far longer than anyone expected. And while we are close to a final agreement, we are not there yet.

The port owns the farm. We understand that. We also understand that we are a non-profit organization. While port funding is important to the farm, our ability to manage the site in the future and create engaging, attractive, educational and cultural activities for residents and tourists relies on much more than that funding. In order for the port to respond to its financial needs, the farm will receive less port funding in 2016 and beyond than it has received in the past 10 years. We believe that we can respond to those concessions with increased community programming, appeals to volunteers, outreach and organizational changes. But our confidence in that can be easily shaken if we don’t know who the tenants are going to be, and if our nonprofit purpose and goals will be minimized or hampered by activities of new tenants.

Like the port, the county, and WSU, the management group and tenants are looking for opportunities to make the farm more sustainable and stable. Everyone would like to see if something good can come of all this.

The rumors, misunderstandings, confusion, hard feelings, reactions expressed by leaders and community this week remind us that we are all interconnected. We need to communicate with each other. We need to share information. Let’s hope for an outcome that is based on mutual respect and a realistic look at not only what is possible for the agencies in play but what is good and right and ethical for the community they serve.

Feldman is executive director of the Greenbank Farm Management Group.