Ongoing dueling Eastsound Water recalls

||| FROM CAROL ANN ANDERSON, RON CLAUS, and JIM COOK |||

On Wednesday of this week, the “leadership” of Eastsound Water Users Association, calling itself the “Eastsound Water Team,” sent an email to EWUA members stating that we had “breached [our] fiduciary duties as board members” of the Association and should be recalled. All three of us reject this accusation in no uncertain terms.

The Eastsound Water Team obviously doesn’t understand to whom our fiduciary duty is owed. Our primary fiduciary duty is to represent the rights and interests of the EWUA members — not to keep information secret that the dominant board faction would rather not be made public. That is the principal reason we filed affidavits with the San Juan County Superior Court in connection with the Farm to Market lawsuit challenging the validity of the 2023 elections and their aftermath. We wanted the Court to understand what has been happening behind the scenes at EWUA. They don’t.

The 2023 elections were in error, both parties agree. Where we differ is on what was done to correct their worst error of not including a third slot on the ballot for the board seat being opened by Clyde Duke, whose term was ending last year. This is largely the basis of the Farm to Market lawsuit (which has not yet been decided by the Court).

EWUA Board President Teri Nigretto and Vice President Jim Nelson contend (through attorney Rochelle Doyea) that they exercised substantial compliance with the intent of the bylaws by appointing third-place vote-getter Jim Cook to a seat on the board —although Nelson has been contradictory in his statements to the Court about when that occurred. A December 15, 2023, EWUA press release in fact said that he had already been appointed by then.

But they inexplicably held Cook off the board until mid-January 2024 and did not allow him to participate in an appointment to fill the seventh board seat, which had come open after the November 2023 resignation of Joe Cohen. No good reason has been offered for this exclusion, which resulted in the appointment of Leith Templin to that seat.

Our affidavits to the Court reviewing this election bear directly on the manipulations that occurred, which is probably why the dominant board faction is so upset. They would much rather that this information be kept a closely guarded secret. This is yet another example of a worrisome pattern that Michael Riordan has dubbed a culture of secrecy at Eastsound Water.

Thus the proposal to recall the three of us can be seen for what it is — an attempted retribution for our continuing efforts to lift the sordid veil and tell the Court and EWUA members the hard, straight truth about what the dominant board faction has been up to behind closed doors. They try to present our actions as if they were opposed to the Association itself, but that is a canard. We instead oppose the secretive, unfair and illegitimate actions of the dominant board faction, not the organization or its members.

Please read our statements carefully at RecallWater.com. And if you agree these statements make good sense, please join us in the growing effort to recall the dominant board faction by signing the petition and proxy forms you can find on this website.