POULSBO – Poulsbo city officials are considering plans to acquire a pair of properties – a large swath of former state timberland and the Snider Park baseball complex – from Kitsap County.

On Wednesday night, Poulsbo City Council members signed off on a $20,000 budget amendment that would cover environmental assessments and associated escrow fees if the properties were transferred.

According to city officials, the transfer would include 184 acres of forested property off Rude Road, near Highway 3, and the Snider Park fields off Viking Avenue. Both properties sit just outside Poulsbo city limits. The forest property was once used as logging land by the state’s Department of Natural Resources and was transferred to Kitsap County in 2015, according to county property records.

“The county approached us and said, ‘Would you want this property?’” Mayor Becky Erickson reported in a City Council committee meeting on Wednesday. “It’s probably, more rightfully, should be part of the city of Poulsbo because inevitably in a hundred years that will probably be part of the city.”

In an interview with the Kitsap Sun, Erickson said that part of the disposition of the property from the state requires that the land stays as open space.