Guest Opinion: Charter Should Reconfigure Council and Move Ahead

By Walt Corbin

As a former freeholder [who] was involved with the creation of our Charter form of government, I would like to make some observations and express some concerns I have relative to comments that I have have heard from those that have been elected to review and make recommendations on its improvement.

I tend to agree that three, or  perhaps three and two at large council members might be a better mix. To prevent balkanizing, which has happened with the present council, perhaps it might be possible to have the three not at large, run on the basis of evenly divided populations, as they would run in three districts. That way the cost of campaigning would be tolerable. The two at large could run on the basis of an outer island district.

That situation gets a bit tricky but I leave it up to better legal beagles to figure out if it could be done. If not I would settle for three Council members, each running in their assigned district.

I definitely would oppose that elected Council members be entrusted to manage the County. Management is not a casual profession as is running for what is generally a temporary elected position. I was on a number of County committees when we had commissioners. It was chaos having three people with equal power and authority trying to manage the County. This would be an unacceptable form of hierarchy in any organization.

I was opposed to the salary arrangements that were afforded the present Council. We a County of 17,000, were paying our council member almost 100% more than the County of Whatcom that had 175,000 constituents. Of course they had a County Administrator as we have. And like Whatcom we must retain a professional manager or administrator.

Our Council should be entrusted to enact policy and strictly restrained from micromanaging the administrator. I think we have already seen how nonproductive that can be when it has taken the  present council years rather than months to enact policy.

I must emphasize that the Council retain a number that will permit it to communicate with one another without the restraint of the open public meetings act. We now have an interactive video link that can easily tie the three or more districts into a feasible communications link. Of course there is also email. Not to mention the telephone.

It always seems that the bureaucrats must herd up and spend needless hours commuting. The excuse that I heard for doing so is that only after a meeting could they sign the documents that they discussed at their weekly meetings. I suggested that they look into fax’s that serve many organizations with its ability to transcribe signatures.

The Charter will serve us well, but we cannot  go back to the old political days that were grossly ineffective and inefficient. Thoughtful revision is good and some of those ideas of the review committee should be thoughtfully ruminated to the fullest. Let’s not go backward.