The City of Oak Harbor may make more than $200,000 by clear-cutting unused property.

Members of the City Council approved a proposal last month to work with a forestry consultant to obtain permits to log two 20-acre properties that the city owns on Sleeper Road.

The consulting company, Cronin Forestry of Port Townsend, will also help the city prepare the timber sale contract for bidding.

Cronin estimated the value of the Douglas fir and “whitewood” on the property at about $228,000.

But because of the volatility of the softwood market, the lumber jacks may have to wait.

“When we originally did the timber values back in August, they have since gone down,” City Engineer Joe Stowell told the council, “and so our plan was to be patient and wait for those values to go back up.”

Cronin’s original estimate of the timber harvested by clear-cutting was more than $300,000.

The City Council approved a professional services agreement with Cronin last August in an amount not to exceed $12,000.

Cronin presented estimated timber harvest values for clear-cutting the site, as well as the values for harvesting 50 or 75 percent of the trees.

In its report from December, Cronin explains that a clear-cutting permit will likely require a reforestation plan, even though the property will likely be sold to a gravel mining company.

Last October, Steve Bebee, the operations manager in public works, presented the city with a list of 21 vacant and unused city-owned properties.

The 40 acres on Sleeper Road were the largest and more valuable properties on the list.

The city purchased the two parcels at the corner of Sleeper Road and State Highway 20 in the early 1960s. City staff used the properties, which are across the road from a commercial gravel pit, as a source of unrefined gravel.

The parcels are wooded and rich in gravel, which make them potentially very valuable.

A number of city officials have proposed selling the properties and reinvesting the money into the city. One idea was to use the funds toward building regional ballfields, but no decisions have been made.

City officials decided to log the Sleeper Road property and recoup the value of the wood before selling the property.

The funds will likely be used to pay for the appraisal, which may cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Councilman Rick Almberg proposed at a workshop that the city mine the gravelly material itself in order to save the city from having to purchase fill materials that may be needed for construction of the new sewage treatment plant.

In the agenda bill for the council meeting, public works staff pointed out a professional geologist would have to be hired to do the complicated work of obtaining a mining permit and that funds for the work aren’t in the budget.

In addition, a large number of trees would have to be removed anyway if the city does intend on moving forward with obtaining a mining permit, according to city staff.

In the end, the motion to move forward with clear-cutting the property passed on a 6-1 vote. Only Councilwoman Tara Hizon voted against it.