||| FROM BRUCE WILSON |||
Dear Council-member Wolf,
While there may be parts of this situation I’m not privy to I want to give you my opinion based on the information you supplied. I was alerted of your proposal to replace Steve Smith from the SJI planning commission for alleged misstatement of facts and insulting conduct.
I have known Steve for several years and have always enjoyed his attention to detail and ability to grasp what’s important in an issue. To get an informed idea of your complaint, I have watched and rewatched the Planning Commission’s April 15 meeting and binge-watched the rest. I found Steve Smith, in all instances, to be an articulate, educated, and informed gentleman at all times. I can only deduce from your actions that you do not agree with what he has to say or are overly sensitive to his facts or suggestions.
Intolerance of other people’s views is not a good look for any governing group much less the one we all voted for. Are we to believe the free exchange of information and ideas is to be looked down upon by the SJC Council?
The way to defeat opinions you don’t agree with is by argument and persuasiveness… not by trying to make them disappear.
Please reconsider your actions.
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Thank you Bruce for your choice of actions. No disrespect or heavy handing. Just good clean thoughts!
To help our Community uphold all that’s good in our public activities.
To me, the question is not whether Steve Smith is a gentleman, or thorough, or whether Cindy Wolf agrees or disagrees with his views. Rather, the issue is whether Steve Smith misstated facts.
David, are you saying that Steve Smith misstated facts?
My letter to the Council:
My name is Tenar Hall and I serve on the Eastsound Water Users Association (EWUA) board with Steve Smith. We are a very hand-ons board who work together with our General Manager to solve the challenges that arise in maintaining a healthy water system and develop strategic planning to ensure abundant, clean water for future generations.
As a board, we work to prioritize the needs of the system, examine the limited financial and physical resources available, and explore ways to optimize what we can achieve within the given bounds. This is a nontrivial and sometimes time consuming process. However, I believe this process is necessary for us to make the best decisions possible within our problem space, which is our duty to our members, and in my opinion, to our community as a whole.
As President of the EWUA, I have found Steve Smith to be an excellent facilitator of our deliberations. He works to ensure that we are all heard and have a solid understanding of a topic prior to voting on an action. In my opinion, we are all treated with respect even when our work is being critiqued. I also have found Steve to appreciate and value our critique of his work. In general, I believe that our individual strengths are valued and appropriately allocated.
Prior to moving forward with removing Steve Smith from the Planning Commision, I urge the County Council to take a hard look at the Planning Commission’s objectives along with Commissioner Smith’s actions and verify that they are not in alignment. Then should the justification for removal be “inefficiency”, the Council owes the public its explicit interpretation of the term along with a clear demonstration on how Smith’s actions fall within their defined parameters.
Thank you for your time and service.
Sincerely,
Tenar Hall
Steve Smith’s letter to the County Council re: accusations
This is a copy of my letter to the County Council in response to Councilor Wolf’s desire to remove me from the Planning Commission.
The letter links to the video of the County Council session where the accusations are leveled and to the Planning Commission meeting that lasted for 6+ hours. I note the time stamp of each of the times that I speak so you can hear for yourself if you think that I was ever disrespectful or inefficient.
I am also the president of Eastsound Water Users Association, which is a member coop. It is an elected position. Prior to moving to Orcas Island more than seven years ago, I was the director of a nonprofit providing education on the nation’s largest aquifer. I was a farmer and reliant on water. Jennifer (my wife) and I still own the farm, and my brother farms it for us. As a part of that process, I was involved in water policy creation at the State level. I am passionate about water. It is a vital and critical element for our community.
In the Eastsound water service area, water quality and water quantity are excellent. Our largest challenge is housing for our employees. Forty percent of our water operators are at high risk of losing their homes in the near future. To address that risk for them and others in the County, the County Council needs to make some modifications to the regulations controlling housing. Only the County Council can change those.
I encourage you to listen to the accusations that Councilor Wolf levels during the County Council meeting of April 19. I encourage you to listen to at least some of my comments during the Planning Commission meeting on April 15, and decide for yourself if there is anything that I have done or said that justifies the attempt to silence a voice. All Planning Commission sessions are recorded. They are usually very long.
This is planning commissioner Steve Smith’s response to the county council… The County Council wants the comprehensive plan completed as quickly as possible. To that end, the Council has urged the Planning Department to move with all haste. To do that, there is a large number of goal and policy items put on the table for the Planning Commission to consider. There is a lot of reading. There are a lot of questions. To assist the County in completing this comp plan, as is required by the law, the Planning Commission volunteered to dedicate double our time, holding two meetings a month rather than the usual one. I have not missed a meeting. And, they often go for 6+ hours at a time.
I do not believe that I have ever been discourteous during the meetings. Even if I had been, that is not cause for removal according to the law.
Please consider the letter that I am writing to the Council and listen to the relevant portion of the recordings. See if you see or hear anything that justifies the accusations.
David Korbin,
“Misstatement of fact” is not grounds for removal of a planning commission member. I’d hazard to say that every member of an advisory committee at one point or another in their term of service has misstated a fact. That is the reason we encourage thorough and thoughtful discussion – to make sure that as many factual issues are vetted as possible.
There is ZERO basis for dismissal of Mr. Smith and the Council should be seriously looking at county conduct rules in regards to this basis for this attack on Mr. Smiths civic service.
That is not to say that Steve misstated a fact at any point. But if he had, it is not grounds for removal.
This is super long. I hope Lin will consider printing it here, or maybe as an opinion piece.
I wrote a letter to Council on May 3, in reaction to the potential removal of Steve Smith from the Planning Commission (PC). Here’s what I’ve learned since then. We don’t have all the facts. We oughtn’t have a hearing without them all. This will take time. We should know the truth about things before drawing foregone conclusions. Postponement would give Council and Staff time to consult with Legal and draft and enact policy and protocol for behavior and disciplinary actions if needed. I think we need to go back a lot further than April’s meetings to understand the full trajectory of the last two years.
On the same day of Steve’s hearing, there’s also a hearing on PC’s recommended greatly-increased vacation rental cap numbers that shocked and angered so many of us. It would be wise to postpone Steve’s hearing until we see the results of the PC recommendation – who recommended the increased caps? What will Council do with PC’s recommendation – especially as concerns Orcas and Eastsound UGA, which took a HUGE hit and still carries the brunt of the load. All PC meetings are recorded and searchable. See the agenda for Tuesday – items 2 and 4.
https://media.avcaptureall.cloud/meeting/3eda05ad-87c6-4b0a-b21a-0f546945c808
I asked in both letters that Steve’s removal hearing be dropped from the Agenda for the 17th for the above-mentioned reasons. I hope Council will NOT vote on the 17th- that they’ll continue the hearing while they digest Public input – both on VR caps and on Steve’ hearing. We all need proper time to learn what’s true, gather Public Records, and educate ourselves – as well as encourage Council to consult their own Legal and write sound policy so they can’t be sued.
Let’s find out what has happened over this past 2 years, in the midst of covid lockdowns and economic, physical, and psychological damages and hardships for our community. We don’t have all the data yet. We need it, because FACTS will give us the truth.
I took the ball and ran with what Steve and another individual told me, without verifying anything with Cindy or with the person I vilified unjustly; David Williams – Erika Shook’s replacement as director of DCD. That was sloppy, lazy, and irresponsible of me. I know a lot more now about the Comp Plan Review process, which is 6 YEARS behind schedule. How did that happen? We need all the facts. Who’s responsible for these kinds of delays? Who sued, and why? How does that affect us all? Admittedly, that leaves Steve in a tough spot if they go through with his removal – which is why I wrote in the first place. That said, there is a much bigger, interconnected picture to all of this. We need to know what that is, first and foremost.
I wrote a second letter to council on May 11, apologizing for my wrong-headed assumptions about David, and also to ask that they draft and adopt some formalized, written, transparent way to level complaints against any planning commissioner or volunteer on any advisory board. Steve had outlined one protocol for the way to go about any complaints or intent for disciplinary actions or removal. I think we need more: We need a way for Council to receive complaints while protecting any whistle blowers. We need warnings to be given in written form – not by phone – in a step by step process; maybe probation would be part of it with removal as the final step if necessary. This would be fair to all parties and guide our steps.
I have a good relationship with Cindy Wolf. I was distressed to watch the April 19th council meeting where she asked to have a hearing for Steve’s removal; I do not know her to be rash. Now that I understand more of the complexities affecting the Comp Plan review process, I empathize with Council’s wish to have the Comp Plan done by this year’s Work Plan deadline in July. It’ will take another year (2023) for DCD to make the regulations and policies supporting the Vision. David Williams was handed a huge task – to finish the comp plan elements by the deadline so that they can finalize it in fall and start working on regulations and policy in Jan. 2023. They have to start this entire Comp Plan Review process over in 2025! That’s a lot of pressure.
Regulations and policies ought to follow the vision, but the way things are going, being 6 years late really backs DCD and Council into a corner, as concerns The GMA. We have no good way to take care of environments that are crucial to our water quality, among other things like nearshore protection and salmon recovery. If we don’t uphold the Environmental element and make meaningful policy and regulations to protect it, we’ll forever lose our rural character and quality of life. We will lose even more right to protect these things in the future; they are already so badly eroded.
We can’t afford to gloss over or weaken protective and fair regulations if we want to plan how we grow, and truly assess how much the tourism and real estate industries are impacting us. It’s not hard to see how. Eastsound UGA and the obscene proliferation of VRBOs and seasonal homes here, along with all the road projects tearing up our town and our trees – here- where we can least afford to have more deforestation happen in a wetland watershed, or our workers pushed out. The Ferry issues. People are leaving due to lack of affordable housing, effectively exiling and eradicating our middle class – all these are perfect examples of Things Gone Wrong.
How to give incentive for doing right by the environment and quality of life not just for the rich, when some continue to repeat-violate it? That’s where meaningful regulations enter. They protect the rest of us and our ecosystems from repeat violators who’ve gotten away with the harms caused for decades.
We need to have all the facts and get to the bottom of things. Who did what to whom, when, and how does that affect us all? Why might these things be grounds for removal of someone – or not? Everything should be documented in written electronic retrievable form; recordings, emails, whatever.
Archive it all and make it transparent – make timeline graphs of these trajectories. I’m sure citizen volunteers would be glad to step up to help collect and compile these data. Otherwise it’s just more hearsay and misinformation fomenting more division. It’s an inconvenient truth that those who who really have the power are not the politicians; they are much higher up on the food chain. I’m interested in knowing who really runs this County.
It’s time to efficiently and effectively finish the comp plan elements so we can set meaningful policies and regulations. I hope it’s a last resort to remove any advisory committee member, including Steve – unless they are clearly obstructing the process for their own self-interests or financial gain. Again, facts gathered would help us see what really happened that’s not based on hearsay, but rather, on actions and again, I think going back over this past couple years will help us all know what’s true.