Letter to Editor | Time for Teri to resign

||| FROM MICHAEL RIORDAN, FRED KLEIN, AND ROBERT AUSTIN |||

We hereby call for the resignation of Teri Nigretto from the Board of Directors of the Eastsound Water Users Association. Her almost-daily drumbeat of letters emailed to the EWUA membership have been impugning the character and motivations of former board members, thereby exposing the Association to costly lawsuits that could easily bankrupt it. Doubtlessly inspired — and perhaps even written — by General Manager Dan Burke, these messages have not been approved by a vote of the full board, but they were emailed to all members under the EWUA logo and thus appear to represent its official position.

In her recent email #6, she goes far beyond the pale, likening her opponents to the MAGA faction of the GOP and comparing their messaging efforts to Donald Trump’s Big Lie. This kind of deliberate disinformation is driving a deadly stake through the very heart of the Orcas Island community. It has to stop!

And one way to do that is to terminate Teri’s access to the EWUA emailing system. Which will occur if she resigns from her position on the board or, failing that, by the EWUA membership recalling her from office at the end of September.

Last fall the three of us rejected the recall efforts spearheaded by Tenar Hall and Steve Smith, thinking that electing business-savvy women to the EWUA board was a better option. We therefore recruited and enthusiastically supported Teri in the 2023
elections. But we never dreamed that she would be named the new board president — a position for which she has little significant experience. And we have been extremely disappointed by her performance in that role, pitting one board faction against another.

We apologize profusely to EWUA members and the Orcas Island community for the damage our advocacy may have caused. Elections have not proved to be the solution that we had imagined almost a year ago. That is a major reason we have since
joined forces with the current Recall Water team trying to remove Teri and fellow board members Jim Nelson, Michael Cleveland and Leith Templin from the EWUA Board of Directors.

Eastsound Water Users Association needs to begin anew with a renewed board of directors. If Teri doesn’t resign, please vote to remove her in the forthcoming recall effort.