Letter to Editor | Eastsound Water’s February board meeting

||| BY MICHAEL RIORDAN |||

At its February 13 meeting, the Eastsound Water Users Association board once again punted on the question of revealing its financial condition. Doing so yearly is required by the EWUA bylaws which state that the Secretary/Treasurer (or, by delegation, the general manager) must “keep an accurate accounting of the funds of the Association and make an annual report to the membership.” But as far as I can tell from the minutes — and from the meetings I have attended since last August — no such report has been made in over a year.

During the opening public comment period, Robert Austin asked a related question, “Is it the position of the manager and board that they will only provide members with the minimum amount of information required by law?” To which
Secretary/Treasurer Carol Ann Anderson essentially answered yes, that they will provide what is required by the recently passed RCW 24.03A. Given all the turmoil of the past year, it may be understandable that the EWUA board wants to pull in its wings and reveal, as Austin characterized it, “a lack of transparency regarding how members money is being budgeted and spent.” To which President Teri Nigretto said they were “trying to be as transparent as possible, consistent with protecting the Association.”

Washington state law requires that non-profit corporations make their annual financial statements — which include a profit-and-loss statement and a balance sheet — available to members who request them. As the books for 2023 were officially closed on January 31, 2024, according to General Manager Dan Burke, that information should now be available. But he said these records were still under review and could not be released until that was finished. One could hope that this will occur over the next month, so that the 2023 financial statement can be released at the March 19 board meeting — and published on the EWUA website so that all members can access it.

Attention turned next to the ongoing EWUA bylaw revisions, which Vice President Jim Nelson said were close to wrapping up; the revised draft would be sent to all members soon, at least ten days before any board action could be taken on them, as
required. Board member Jim Cook raised the question of whether there should be a membership vote to ratify these changes, pointing to provisions for member input in the 1955 EWUA Articles of Incorporation, which supersede any bylaws. Nelson claimed that they would look into this.

Another bylaws question concerned Robert’s Rules of Order, which currently apply only to voting at the annual meeting and then only at the discretion of the president. Almost all non-profits I’ve been involved in require that these rules apply
uniformly to all meetings — of both the board of directors and membership. Board opinions differed on this issue.

Taking up the 2024 budget, Burke said they were now looking at the two-year 2023-2024 budget to determine if any “tweaks” were needed. “Ultimately, we look at cash flow,” he stated. “Do we make enough to pay the bills?” Which will include the capital costs of the improvement projects slated for 2024. Back in the December 2022 special board meeting at which this two-year budget was adopted, the board had voted to approve a roughly 10 percent increase in water rates — both base rate and usage rate — which one would hope will be sufficient for these purposes.

But “January was wild!” said Burke in recounting recent staff efforts. The frigid 10-degree weather revealed a lot of weak points in the systems under EWUA management or maintenance. The worst of these occurred in the big pipe leading from
Cascade Creek to the Olga filtration and storage system, which had frozen solid and needed to be thawed out while Olga residents were told to conserve and boil their water. EWUA recently took over responsibility for maintenance of the Olga water system, but does this apply to the repairs and upgrades that will obviously be necessary there?

We will be eagerly looking forward to the presentation of the 2023 financial records and statement at the March board meeting, as it was suggested might occur then, after reviews of these data are complete. Doing so would help comply with EWUA bylaws and begin to dispel the clouds of suspicion that have been steadily gathering in recent months, when official business has often been transacted in closed “working sessions” or special meetings — for which the minutes have yet to be published.

Openness and transparency like this would go a long way to resolving the EWUA “culture of secrecy,” as one observer dubbed an increasingly troublesome characteristic of the Association’s management.