Dear Editor:
The Official Findings of the elected Charter Review Commissioners provide compelling reasons to support Proposition 1. After 20 meetings, they adopted detailed and documented findings on a 17-3 vote, and these can be found on the County’s website under Charter Review Commission.
District-only elections make little sense to me in that they created a system where council members can be largely unresponsive to those that live and vote outside their district. A current case in point is that we have three of six council elections taking place next month. Since voters outside the districts where these elections are taking place can’t vote in them, are they even paying attention? Not much, and that certainly wasn’t the case when all county voters could vote for all county legislators, which is the way it was in San Juan County prior to the Charter. Countywide elections will provide countywide accountability and will help unify our island communities. I would much prefer to vote for all of our council members than just one out of six, since their decisions affect all county citizens.
Six legislators are just not needed in a small county. As a former county commissioner, I can attest that there is a certain logic and beauty of needing 2 of 3 votes to make any decision. It makes the legislator have to work harder and be willing to compromise, which I believe leads to better decisions. This is why 34 of the 39 counties in Washington and most counties nationwide have three legislators.
Tom Cowan
Lopez Island
Regrettably, Tom Cowan is misinformed – – most legislative councils are not composed of only three members according to NACO. Additionally, the “logic and beauty of needing two of three votes”, essentially 66.7% of sitting elected officials, is equally logical and beautiful when 4 of 6 votes are required of the existing County Council, also 66.7% of the Council votes. The beauty of logic is that it is consistent and cannot be cherry-picked for desired conclusions.
Tom Cowan’s argument of 3 vs 6 seems logical, but the real issue is that we need one person/one vote per each Council member. I haven’t seen either of our Orcas District Council Members represent the working population of the Eastsound UGA – the largest (but with the least money and clout) population base on Orcas Island. Carte-blanche commercial development continues, while our Critical Areas in and around town are destroyed. So, where does that leave us? When it came to Eastsound, we were made into a UGA (at much protest), and our Critical Areas were thrown under the bus by 3 County Commissioners. In either case, Eastsound lost. What I want to see is someone who represents Eastsound, who cares about us, our concerns, and our wishes to protect our Critical Areas. So far, no go. I hope this Nov. it’s different.