BI council delays work on ethics
Published 1:30 am Saturday, August 14, 2021
Bainbridge Island Councilmember Brenda Fantroy-Johnson made an emotional plea to make the Ethics Program more professional, but that idea was denied.
“It’s broken beyond repair,” she said at Tuesday night’s council meeting.
Deputy mayor Michael Pollock brought the issue forward, recommending a professional hearing examiner take the place of the volunteer Ethics Committee. It works with land-use issues, he said.
Fantroy-Johnson agreed with Pollock. She said a professional outsider should be making the decisions – someone without an agenda. “There are too many people weighing in,” she said. “It’s like high school. The Ethics Committee has ethical issues.”
Fantroy-Johnson said the reason she got involved with the council was to get it to be courteous to one another, get city business done and not pick each other apart. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, people try to get rid of others they don’t like or who don’t agree with you, she said. “We need to throw it out, start over and get it right,” Fontroy-Johnson said.
But the majority of the council said they had just set their top priorities at a recent retreat, and this was not one of them.
“The program isn’t perfect,” Councilmember Kirsten Hytopoulos said, adding at some point they should try to make it better, but now isn’t the time. “I’m not ready to throw out what we have.”
Councilmembers Joe Deets, Leslie Schneider and Christy Carr agreed.
Schneider said the only way should would consider it is if changes were recommended by the Ethics Committee itself. “This is a very fragile time right now for public trust,” she said.
Deets added he’s not ready to “make radical change.”
Pollock said having a hearing examiner would provide a professional process as their code would be followed. He said decisions would be more informed based on case law. He also recommended getting rid of Article 1 from the ethics program, which is the code of conduct part. “It’s long overdue,” he said, adding it was controversial in the first place, and it’s difficult to interpret. He said few entities have it, as it tries to guide free speech of public officers.
Mayor Rasham Nassar said she’s been trying to get rid of Article 1 since 2018. She said it’s been a “debacle” and brought complaints about personal lives, and some targeted people have not been given a chance to defend themselves.
As a result, she said the council has spent more time debating conduct than important city issues like land use and climate change. “It’s a disservice to this body, the city and the community as a whole,” she said.
Appointing a professional would “restore ethical conduct in government,” Nassar said, adding there are state laws on ethics that should be printed out and put on a wall. “The ethics program promotes trust. I agree it can do that.”
Also at the meeting
City manager Blair King gave his report. He said as expected the Wastewater Treatment Plant will need upgrades over the next few years. He also said since Kitsap County did not meet a deadline, BI can pass its own one-tenth of 1% tax that would raise $450,000 annually for affordable housing projects.
The council also passed a resolution confirming the direction it set for itself at its recent retreat. The high-priority items are: Climate Action Implementation, Winslow Master Plan, Housing Action Plan, Housing Needs Assessment, Housing Inventory, Groundwater Management Plan, Wastewater Treatment Plant Upgrade/Beneficial Water Reuse, Transfer of Development Rights Program and Small Lots Development Regulations.
The council also OK’d a resolution regarding fire safety measures the public can take to protect its property from wildfires. Mitigation includes clearing 30 feet around the house from vegetation.
Public comment
Most speakers were interested in affordable housing, but one talked about Puget Sound Energy.
David Fortlain said Bethany Lutheran Church has been interested in providing affordable housing for years. He said a new state law mandates “increased density bonus for religions organizations.” He made a formal request to the City Council to come up with a number of what that might look like. He said the church wants to “translate their vision into reality,” but they need to know if that means four dwellings on their property or 24. Fortlain said he’d like to work with the city to construct the law. He’d like to see a model statute that could be used elsewhere.
David Smith and Hayes Gori talked about another affordable housing project – Wintergreen Townhomes. Smith said they are under a strict timeline so city staff came up with a developer agreement as a potential solution that has since been worked out. “Our contract is at a dead end,” he said, adding Visconsi has allowed two years of extensions, but won’t allow another because it has another buyer. Gori said the project has 31 units for low-income buyers. “We believe in affordable housing,” he said. “This is a big deal whose time has past. We want to be part of the solution. Let’s work out some revisions.”
Tom Hansen talked about PSE. “In God We Trust, all others bring data,” he said. Hansen said he has suffered power outages of up to three days in 45-degree temperatures living in the south end of BI. Being a skeptic, he wanted to find out the cause. He received five years of data from PSE. He said better vegetation management would help. “There are lots of trees on powerlines. That really scares me,” he said, adding those could fall victim to wildfires.
