Sunday, March 13, 2016

Where has the Sunshine gone??

 Where has the Sunshine gone in Gig Harbor?



   If you read the Tacoma News Tribune Sunday March 13, you read this is Sunshine Week all over these United States of America.

            Sunshine Week defines the importance of open Government and freedom of information laws.
            In 2015 The Gig Harbor Mayor and City Council set up a secret committee for the purpose of holding secret meetings.  There were to be no recordings and the public was barred from attending these secret meetings.
            The stated intent of these secret meetings was to discuss rezoning Gig Harbor’s waterfront.  Members of the public were to be interviewed.

EXCEPT
             No one knew about these secret meetings so interviewees were few. OOPS.
            The city did a selective outreach and invited business groups, builders and developers to be interviewed.  Purposely, the city did not invite folks who had ever spoken in favor of preserving our historic, residential waterfront to be part of this discussion.
            Several folks were interviewed at once. The Council did not want evidence of these meetings so handwritten notes were taken by the Planning Department. These are the same employees the council directed with finding support for their rezoning our waterfront.
            Soon the planning department will make public what they wrote down.

            When a meeting has a stated outcome.....
when participants have a financial stake in the outcome.....
when words are not recorded.....
and.....
meetings are not open to the public,.....
  there is NO open government.
( Was the downtown location of our herons discussed at these secret meetings?)  
In the fall of 2015, during a City Council meeting the Mayor assured C4GH these meetings were intentionally set up to be secret, to require no minutes and to bar the public.  Citizens for the Preservation of Gig Harbor asked the City Council to require these meetings be open....Council member Malich was the only council member who spoke in favor of open meetings.  The rest of the council refused to ask for open meetings.
Talk about your Open Government....
     The Mayor and City Council are waiting to hear your opinions about secret meetings....EXCEPT, their email addresses are not so OPEN and easy to find on the city web site.
      Thank  goodness you will find those email addresses right here:


Mayor and Council email addresses:

arbenzc@cityofgigharbor.net

Several of you asked for additional detail information regarding those secret meetings to discuss rezoning downtown.
Here is the detail chronological order:
     Around July 2015  The Gig Harbor Planning and Building Committee members are Council members Kadzik, Ekberg and Lovrovich. The Gig Harbor planning department explained to these council members the intent of this secret Harbor Element committee is to discuss rezoning downtown.   (The Planning and Building committee is less than a quorum.  It is recorded and open to the public.)  This meeting and conversation is recorded.
    Around August 2015.   Planning Commissioners continue their discussion regarding a special, non public and non recorded secret committee with the intent of this secret committee  to discuss rezoning downtown, higher density, building sizes, etc.
  Planning Commission meetings are recorded and this conversation was recorded.
September 2015  Citizens for the Preservation of Gig Harbor  inquires about these secret meetings during the public comment time of a city council meeting.  Our concern is about the Appearance of Fairness Doctrine and Open Government.
  We asked each of the council members if they would support having this subcommittee be recorded and opened to the public.  Council members Kadzik, Payne, Lovrovich, Perrow, Ekberg, and Arbenz refused to support opening these meetings to the public. Council member Malich was very concerned that the public is blocked from these meetings.
      The Mayor and city attorney told C4GH this committee was created not to have a quorum and thereby  barring the public from attending and not allowing any recording of the meetings. (in 2014 The Wa State Supreme Court said that committees where there was no quorum did not have to be open to the public and did not have to be recorded. This is still being contested in the courts. GH Council committees do not have a quorum,  and are open to the public and recorded.  The Mayor and council could have opened this secret meetings to the public last Sept. They deliberately chose not to do so.)
   This council meeting was recorded. This conversation recorded at the council meeting.
    December 2015.  C4GH accidentally stumbled on the fact these secret meetings were happening. Any citizen could ask to be interviewed....BUT citizens had to be aware there was a meeting.   Then citizens had to click thru the city site to discover a buried invitation.  After C4GH wrote a public opinion in the newspaper about the secret meetings and the buried invitation, the city finally put the invitation on the opening page.  Of course the public still were not informed there were meetings happening.
  In 2013 a downtown interested persons email list was established by the city. Lots of folks signed up for this notification.  The Planning Dep said  they were not going to use this email list to notify and invite folks to participate in the secret meetings. There was never any out reach to anyone who had spoken to preserve downtown and to fix the traffic first.

  For a fact, the Planning Dep went to the Downtown Waterfront Alliance and invited those businesses to be interviewed.  The outreach was to folks who were on the record as supporting changing downtown.
  Several of C4GH members insisted on being interviewed and experienced how these meetings were conducted. Builders, developers, real estate, business owners were invited to be interviewed. It is not humanly possible to listen, talk and accurately hand write the conversations of 3 more people at the same time.

    It is important to remember the heron colony is located downtown in an area  that could have been discussed during the secret meetings.  No one will ever know.
    These meetings were secret. There is no verification on questions, answers or discussions.
 
    Absolutely nothing is verifiable that comes from these secret meetings. 

  Secrecy was the intent of the mayor and city council. 
Some believe the council is determined on rezoning downtown and charged the Planning Department with finding folks to support their rezone scheme.  The proof will be in the pudding.
"The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have create."   Washington State Constitution

 Citizens for the Preservation of Gig Harbor  LLC C4GH: 
 Citizens committed to making Gig Harbor better than we found it! JOIN US!! 
Sign up for email: citizensforgigharbor@gmail.com 
https://www.facebook.com/Citizens4GigHarbor 
Mayor and 4 council seats up for re-election in 2017!

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