Editorial: Taking Care of Business

Care and business — two words that bring up “opposite” images:

Care —  concern, sympathy, enabling, support, charity
Business — accounting, labor, compensation, profit, expedient

Sound too political? I agree, but Orcas Island stands out as a community of people who care about business, about sustaining the natural, wild beauty of this place by making sure our business can thrive here. Witness recent letters and opinions and responses to Orcas Issues:

• Janet Alderton’s   Guest-opinion-Cao-fears
• Rolf Nedelman’s Cao-update-not-required-in-review-of-comp-plan

being the most recent examples.

To take care of business in a positive, effective way, citizens must first enter the conversation. Not off-the-cuff or emotional conflabs, but purposeful, informed meetings with some direction.

To understand the mission, personalities and framework for “taking care of business,” one needs to attend meetings. As a member of the public, you are not required to read, discuss or prepare for these meetings. But you can attend and become familiar with the language and the cast of characters shaping island “progress.”

Meetings are a waste of time, you say? I am reminded of when I worked as a record-keeper for the mysterious MCAC-DRM project meetings at Boeing. No wait, it was the DCAC/MRM project, meaning “Define and Control Airplane Configuration/Management Resource Management.”  The purpose of the project was to define and standardize acronyms that arose  during the plane configuration and management of resources process. I came to understand the purpose of the meetings themselves as defining the language used in standardizing the models for designing aircraft (as opposed to unique designs such as the one including a throne for an Arab potentate), and to standardize the parts (nuts and bolts) used in building airplanes.

Acronyms flew around that room for days, and I was issued a 39-page acronym directory that included:

1. new acronyms
2. current acronyms
3. former acronyms that the new acronyms will replace

Now that was a near-meaningless meeting! But that was Boeing, this is Orcas Island. Meetings here are a lot more comprehensible and lively, and they affect us directly. Even if the process does take time, understand that we’ll probably be living with the decisions that come out of those meetings for a lot longer time.

Taking part in meetings is worth a look-see, and the first time, participants may feel they are back with me at Boeing. But instead, think of it as a soap-opera, or a saga.

• There’s the parents who remember starting schools on Orcas; or commuting from other islands to attend school on Orcas (which students still do today);
• There’s the ferry-rider who recalls when  a WSF ferry captain, showing his home to his girlfriend, ran the boat into the dock and impacted ferry service for month;
• There’s the property owner who is frustrated in expanding his business because of inconsistent enforcement of zoning laws;
• There’s the firefighters who couldn’t get to a house fire quickly enough because the road system wasn’t mapped;
• There’s the agency director who campaigned a bond issue to “underground” power cables so wind and snow wouldn’t knock out power so easily;
• There’s the retail store owner who was nearly bankrupted by compliance with regulations.

Celebrate the successes, “catch” government working, as Charlie Binford did in noting the implementation of an online food-workers permit

Singling out the Eastsound Planning Review Committee, the closest thing Orcas Island has to a local governing body (note that it serves as an advisory committee to the County Council, but is regularly attended by County staff and legislators), this body of volunteers meets monthly on the first Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m. They’ll meet tomorrow at the Eastsound Fire Station. They invite you, as always, to their public meeting, especially those who complain of “back room deals.”

They work with a lot of processes and regulations, and sometimes it feels like the meeting is a new version of the movie, “Groundhog Day.’

But in the last five years, they’ve participated in designing and installing the Mount Stormwater Treatment Plant, the 4-way stop at “A” Street and North Beach Road, and a checklist to be used by prospective builders and county permitting staff in obtaining county permits and in complying with county code.

The agenda for tomorrow’s meeting includes advancing the following projects:

• Review of plans for office space at Lavender Hollow (OPAL permanent affordable housing) and a windbreak for the Post Office
• Report from Prune Alley property owners regarding the installation of curbs and corners when County Public Works chipseals that road next year
• Installation of trash cans in Eastsound
• Changes proposed to the three-lot property between North Beach Road and Prune Alley (formerly the Senior Center and the FEAST garden)
• Updating the Eastsound Sub-area Plan, which is incorporated in — here come the acronyms! — the County Comprehensive Plan (CCP) and pre-dates the County’s adoption of the Growth Management Act (GMA), governing the Eastsound Urban Growth Area (UGA)

Just think, in the near future, say two years, we may see a windbreak to address the traffic/parking situation at the Eastsound Post Office, curbs and corners — maybe sidewalks — along Prune Alley, trash cans to deal with debris in Eastsound, a walkway through the “Fern Street connection,” and a uniform and simple way of adhering to county zoning laws.

Last month, on March 1, the EPRC had an excellent, lively and productive discussion about what uses should be allowed in the Eastsound Village core and which uses should be allowed in the service light-industrial area just north of the Village proper. This discussion impacts business-owners and land caretakers alike.

We all have lives. We can’t go to every meeting. But we can take care of the business that most concerns us by being informed of the discussions and decisions that impact our lives.

Taking care of business is a conversation we can engage in enthusiastically when we know the language, understand the personalities, and frame the questions in a solution-seeking discussion, not a blame-seeking argument.