Shireene Hale's Pattern Of Behavior

Yesterday, the Council selected Michael Thomas as the new County Manager.  Thomas is from King County and has a planning background. Mr. Thomas, you have your work cut out for you because our Planning Department functions like a rogue government within a government, with a functional head who openly despises public participation and dissent.

In the email below (from a year ago), Hale discusses her reaction to a CAO public meeting that was, from our perspective, one of the greatest meetings from a public participation standpoint. It was one of the worst from the standpoint of the reaction of public officials.

Once again, Shireene Hale thinks dissent is violence. Someone who regularly cannot tell the difference between dissent and violence may not be stable enough to deal with the public, and perhaps we should be concerned about her reactionary behavior or the irrational steps she might take.

Who is the threat here? It makes me wonder whether Hale will start coming to meetings armed and dangerous. In more ways than one, we need protection from Hale.

From: Shireene Hale [mailto:shireeneh@sanjuanco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 11:54 AM
To: Colin Maycock; Jon Cain; Lovel Pratt; Patty Miller; Pete Rose; Randall Gaylord; Rene Beliveau; Richard Fralick; Shireene Hale
Subject: Agenda for Monday CAO Implementation Team meeting?

Good morning,

What do you all have for agenda items for the Monday CAO/SMP Implementation team meeting? Colin will not be attending as he will be in Costa Rica.

At this point I have two items:

*         Conduct of public meetings on CAO and SMP.

*         Alternatives for getting the wetland and fish and wildlife regulations through the approval process.

Conduct of Public Meetings

On the conduct of public meetings, I would like to discuss options for ensuring that our citizens, staff, consultants, Council and Planning Commissioners do not feel threatened or intimidated, and to ensure that comments are focused on the issues, and not on blaming or attacking individuals. Problem meetings in the past few months include the last three Planning Commission meetings (particularly the March 6 meeting), the San Juan town hall meetings, and the Orcas SMP meeting.

For those that have not heard, we are aware of two separate instances of people discussing the use of guns. One was a warning from someone that works at the Orcas fire station, the other was a conversation overhead on the ferry. Chances are nothing will happen, but given the way John Evans and others are stirring up fear, hatred and hostility, and given some of the testimony we heard on March 6, I don't think the possibility of violence should be dismissed. 

In addition, prior to the March 16 Planning Commission meeting, Gordy Peterson suggested to Janice  that she should consider calling in sick rather than attend the meeting, because "it was going to be ugly". This may constitute intimidation of a public servant under RCW 9A.76.180 and 9A.04.110. Given everything that is going on, it was intimidating to those of us charged with running the meeting. 

Alternatives to help with the public meetings include:

*         A clear statement from our leaders (Patty and/or the full Council ?) assuring people that we will get through this and that their comments are being considered. Other topics that could be touched on include reassuring people that if their house burns down, they will be able to replace it; that we are doing are best to keep costs down; that we are trying to find the least intrusive approach that will pass muster with the Growth Board; that what we are trying to develop is a moderate approach that is more fair and tied to the current science than the Ecology recommended regulations; that we are all friends and neighbors, and though we may disagree it is important to be civil and respectful of one another so that all points of view can be heard, and so that people don't feel intimidated; that we will try to find the resources to refine
the wetland map so that is does not show man made ponds that are not wetlands; and encourage people to read the proposals for themselves, rather than believing what others are telling them. 

*         Do what we can to get through the rest of the process in as efficient a manner as possible, to remove the anxiety associated with uncertainty.

*         Consider holding a joint PC/ CC hearing on the fish and wildlife amendments, to provide the staff and Planning Commission, and particularly the Planning Commission chair, with some additional support, and to help move the amendments along through the process. 

*         Hold all meetings in the Council chambers so that they can be live streamed. If F&W is a joint hearing with the Council, perhaps testimony could be taken from the Orcas and Lopez libraries (we don't have the capacity to do it without assistance and another staff person).

*         Consider having a deputy present for the hearings/ meetings. We have been trying to avoid this - but it may be time to give it serious consideration.

*         Consider developing clear expectations of conduct, enforced by the chair, and let everyone know what they are and what will happen if they are not followed. I suggest that clapping, jeering, cheering, and statements that are focused on individuals rather than issues not be tolerated. Options include asking individuals to leave, and if the Planning Commission/ Council are in deliberations (testimony is not being accepted), if necessary the room can be cleared so that deliberations can continue without the disruptions.

Adoption Process for Wetlands and Fish and Wildlife Amendments

Regarding the approach for getting through the remainder of the process, following is a schedule I sent to Patty yesterday.

Wetland Amendments

April 23 - Signed PC draft of wetland amendments and staff report submitted to Council.

May 1 - First touch to review PC recommended draft, findings and recommendations (including the  recommendation for a conference call between the Council, Dr. Adamus and Dr. Mayer, to discuss whether we are properly applying Mayer et al. 2007, and to consider using a paper by Xuyang Zhang et al. (2010) as a guide to buffer width, rather than Mayer
et al.)

May 7 - field trip (may be just wetlands - if we can get the F&W draft out prior to then, could be both wetlands and F&W).

May 9 - publish hearing notice

May 21 or 22 - CC hearing on wetlands (half day?)

??? - deliberations (probably need a full day)

F&W Amendments

Prior to June 20 - release hearing draft and publish notice.

July 9 or 10 - Joint PC/CC hearing, with PC deliberations in July, followed by CC deliberations. If necessary CC can hold another hearing on another draft prior to consistency review. (Note: I am out of town on vacation June 18 through July 4).

Note: Having a joint hearing does a couple of things. This is likely to be a difficult hearing and it provides the Planning Commission and CD&P staff some support that they don't normally have. It also helps us get through the steps in a more efficient manner. 

Please let me know if you have additional items for discussion.

Shireene

Thanks, But We Believe The Friends More Than You!

Suppose you come from an old island family, and you've lived on your property for decades. You have photos of your beach going back 100+ years.

Now suppose that the County identifies "shoreline armoring" on your beach, which the County characterizes as a potential ecological hazard to fish. The trouble is that you don't have any shoreline armoring on your beach, and you don't know what the County is talking about.

So you write to the County to try to set matters straight, but the reply you receive from the County essentially says, "Sorry, but the Friends have mapped shoreline armoring on your property, and I really can't correct the data now that it's in the database."

Thank you for your comments and pictures. The County was not involved in collecting the shoreline modification data used in the Inventory and Characterization Report shoreline modification maps. The dataset was collected by the Friends of the San Juan’s and subsequently passed along to the Department of Ecology to be used in the Washington Coastal Atlas.

Many of the datasets used in the Inventory and Characterization Report were developed by organizations other than the County, including the National Marine Fisheries, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Native Tribes, Department of Ecology and others.

In order to be consistent with the state law, the County collected available information for inclusion in the Inventory and Characterization Report. That said, the County is not precluded from considering anecdotal evidence and your letters and pictures are part of the record that the Planning Commission and Council will consider when evaluating the merits of the updated Shoreline Master Program.

I relayed your concerns to the data providers and they have reaffirmed their original finding. I’ve attached a copy of an email I received from Tina Whitman of the Friends of the San Juan’s. Ms. Whitman, I understand played an active role in the collection of the data.

Without a site visit, I cannot determine the accuracy of this data point.

Please submit your comments to colinm@sanjuanco.com or to the mailing address above.

Thank you for your time and commitment to SMP update process.

Well, thank you very much indeed!  We (the County) believe Tina Whitman and not you, but thanks all the same. We think your homeowner information stretching back decades is anecdotal, but the Friends information is science.

Want to guess what all the fuss is about? I'm sure you've seen old piles of field stones that dot the pastures in these islands. Settlers used to pile rocks during land clearing to make the land easier to work. Many of these piles can still be seen around the county. It just so happens that in the case described above, an old pile of field stone was placed on the upper part of a beach instead of in a field. Roll forward about 100 years or so and along come the Friends, and they map the old rock pile as a "shoreline modification" ... a pile of field stone that's probably over a century old ... and is in rather shabby condition to boot.

See for yourself.  The homeowners are in disbelief (as is the Trojan Heron).
____________________________________________________________

From: Tina Whitman [mailto:tina@sanjuans.org]
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2012 3:28 PM
To: Colin Maycock
Cc: Stephanie Buffum
Subject: modification inventory question

Hi Colin,

Per your request I reviewed the tax parcel number you sent me in our 2009 shoreline modification inventory ARC GIS geodatabase. 

The attached document shows:

Pg. 1) tax parcel (red dot), armor line from modification inventory (red line), as well as the location of the two photos (black dot and purple triangle);

Pg. 2) the county’s vertical aerial photographs from 2008 with the rockery in question circled in red; and

Pgs. 3) and 4) the two project photos taken at the time of the boat based survey, in June of 2009. 

Our project mapped all shoreline armoring (hardening) greater than 5 feet in shoreline length.  The rock fill at the base of and along that section of bank met that criteria and as a result were mapped.  I don’t know if it has been since been removed, or if it’s a difference of opinion regarding more typical ‘bulkheads’ (the definitions of which vary widely depending on your discipline and region of the country and world)  versus ‘armoring’, but the photos indicate the presence of placed rock in 2008 (san juan county’s vertical aerials) and 2009 (modification inventory field photos).

Regards,

Tina

Tina Whitman, MS

Science Director

Friends of the San Juans

P.O. Box 1344 Friday Harbor, WA 98250

(360) 378-2319 www.sanjuans.org

Countdown To CAOmageddon: Flaw #42 - Gang Green Tactics

Marginalize all opposition. Confuse by using soft-sounding, technical jargon. Don't talk about negative consequences. Rely on poor-quality, incomplete, and cherry-picked science. Then wash it all down with a heavy dose of consensus. That's how you get a plan approved, and planning is everything to gang green.

Here is an official statement from the Department of Ecology on how to put together a committee. It appears in a paper about the Shoreline Management process, but the same could be said for the CAOs:

Selecting a Committee
Committee members should represent a cross section of interest groups and public values. However, all committee members should have experience in working toward consensus. “Radicals” or “extremists” who cannot work in a group setting should be passed over for individuals with similar values who can develop constructive solutions to satisfy opposing interests.

The rest of the paper essentially talks about how to manipulate both the committee and the public at large. Using these rules, our County constituted a Technical Advisory Committee for our Shoreline Management Update, so those rules are at work here in our County.

The planners in charge of our CAO and SMP update (Shireene Hale and Colin Maycock) are both certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), which is a certification offered by the American Planning Association (APA). The APA is an organization that is very VERY focused on wordsmithing.  They've even offered a "Glossary for the Public," which starts off by saying:

Given the heightened scrutiny of planners by some members of the public, what is said -- or not said -- is especially important in building support for planning.

"Building support for planning?" Shows you where their heads are. Committees and plans have literally taken over our lives instead of commerce, free association, and environmental protection. Committees and plans are the weapons of choice of gang green, or maybe it's better to say that it's their habitat. When we create more committees and more planning initiatives, we are undoing ourselves (and doing nothing for the environment either). The further we go down this path, the worse it will get. We will literally be planned out of existence by the insiders, with no benefit to the environment.

I was educated by Keynesians, so whenever the mention of Milton Friedman comes up, I have to admit that I bristle a bit, but I cannot think of a better example of the differences between planning and free enterprise than the short video below. Bravo Milton Friedman! We have completely lost sight of the fact that planning is not necessary to achieve desirable outcomes.

Watch the video and compare the power of the pencil to the power of planning. Assuming we even need more environmental protection here in the islands (and there isn't much evidence of that), then ask yourself, "If free enterprise can produce a pencil (or a car), why can't it produce a clean environment." The truth is that it can, and if we need more environmental protection, we'd be a lot better off if we got rid of the rigged system of planners, bureaucrats, and profit-maximizing non-profits. Have you ever wondered why the Land Bank and our County are facing high debt and financial hard times, but the Friends of the San Juans are flush with cash?

Things that make you go hmmm.

Tiny Bubbles (Bursting)

An unavoidable side effect of planning is over-reliance on forecasts:  forecasts for population, forecasts for pollution, forecasts for stormwater, forecasts for impervious surfaces, forecasts for sea level ... forecasts, forecasts, forecasts! We end up debating and arguing about things that don't really even exist, and may never, except as concepts in the soothsaying minds of planners.

Simon Johnson is an economist at MIT who knows a good deal about forecasting.  He spent a substantial part of his career as a forecaster for the International Monetary Fund. Here is what he said during a 2010 interview about economic forecasting, an endeavor which is likely more "scientific" than any forecast considered by our County:

SIMON JOHNSON: You know, economic forecasting is inherently an impossible task. Between now and the end of next year, the world will be hit by three major shocks, probably.

DAVIDSON: You mean that's just on average over the last century or whatever, there's...

JOHNSON: Yes, exactly. Stuff happens. Okay? You know, the thing you're studying is subject to so much chaos in a mathematical sense, so much randomness, and so making any forecast is going - inherently got this problem.

BLUMBERG: Economic forecasting is big business. Any large company you can think of spends millions a year trying to get a handle on what's coming. So why are all these serious business people spending so much money on forecasts that they surely know are not all that reliable? Again, Simon Johnson.

JOHNSON: I would call it a necessary evil. There's so much imprecision. There's so much, you know, lagging in terms of our updating, that in some sense, we'd be better off without forecasts. We'd better off, you know, making up our minds afresh every day. But the problem is the businesses, the institutions, all involve thinking about the future and planning for the future. And you can't do that without taking a view of the future.

One of the forecasts that our County is required to consider under the GMA is the population projection made by the State's Office of Financial Management (OFM). The last time OFM made a population forecast was in 2007, but since then (paraphrasing Simon Johnson), a lot of stuff has happened, okay?

For GMA purposes, the OFM makes population forecasts every five years. In doing so, it creates a high, medium, and low population forecast for each County. Just recently, the OFM has come out with its provisional 2012 population forecast, which predicts population out to 2040. Before we look at that, let's see how well the previous forecasts have predicted our population in retrospect, keeping in mind Dr. Johnson's description of forecasting as an "impossible task."

Based on census data, our actual population in San Juan County in 2010 was slightly lower than the lowest OFM forecast made in either 2002 or 2007. That's right; we missed all forecasts, albeit the lowest only slightly, to the low side.  Based on that, it would appear our growth bubble has truly burst. If the goal of the Friends, State, and County has been to control or even prevent growth, it would appear they may have achieved that goal for us. Relative to the projections that have been bandied about, we have beaten the growth habit.

What does the 2012 forecast look like? The forecasts are much lower than earlier ones. The 2012 "high" forecast is lower than even previous "medium" forecasts. And, for the first time, the OFM projections include the prospect of population decline. The latest "low" forecast has population around here declining at a fairly rapid  clip.

I have summarized the data in the table below. Under the GMA, the County is required to consider this information [RCW 36.70A.130(1)(c)], and it would seem prudent now to include in our plans at least a contingency for declining population.

On A Slightly Different Asunto

As many of you may already know, the County is working on its Shoreline Management update too. While the CAOs have their BAS synthesis, the SMP has its Shoreline Inventory & Characterization Report. The County has set a deadline of April 30 for public comments on that report, and there is a workshop on April 27 (see the emails below, note the spanish headers for some reason).

At least one community group has provided guidance for how we might protect ourselves by getting on the record about the errors in the I&C Report. Follow the link for instructions. If you've got shoreline property, you probably should attend the workshop on Friday to watch events unfold as well. There is a large cast of characters involved in the SMP update. In addition to consultants and the Department of Ecology, the County has appointed a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) to guide them through the process. Overall, there are dozens of people making decisions that will affect us.

Bear in mind that unlike the CAOs, Ecology has authority over the shorelines. Whenever Ecology puts out a brochure titled "Making Sense of Tough Issues", you know we're probably in for it. Take that brochure's opening advice and participate in a "healthy dialogue".

Andale!

________________________________________________

De: Shireene Hale
Enviado el: vie 20/04/2012 9:01
Para: Colin Maycock; Linda Lyshall; Dan Nickel (DNickel@watershedco.com); Barbara Rosenkotter; Rene Beliveau
CC: Lisa Brown
Asunto: Revised Agenda for April 27 Workshop

Good Morning,

Attached is a slightly revised agenda for the April 27 technical data workshop in Friday Harbor. Unfortunately I don't have the participants e-mail addresses and would appreciate it if you could forward it to those you know will be involved.

I also think it is important to make participants aware of the conference call we had, and that as a result of that discussion, the following options have been identified. Some are minor additions which could be included in the shoreline characterization report without additional cost. For those that are not minor, the County and our consultants will need to weigh the cost of making the changes against the benefits associated with those changes. Following are the options identified during the conference call: 

a) Provide additional explanation of what was included in the scoring system, and its strengths and weaknesses;

b) Add a note that habitat is an important component that can be seen, and that to assess cumulative impacts, changes in habitat need to be tracked over time;

c) Add a clearer statement that not all issues discussed in the text of the document were included in the scoring system;

d) Provide a discussion on the use of a digital elevation model (DEM) rather than Lidar;

e) Provide meta data, a description of how the mapping work was done, and information on materials and methods used; and

f) Consider adding a readers guide to the scoring system and what is and is not included.

Kind regards,

Shireene Hale

Planning Coordinator/ Deputy Director

San Juan County

360.370.7569

shireeneh@sanjuanco.com

From: Colin Maycock
Sent: Thu 4/12/2012 3:31 PM
Subject: Inventory and Characterization Report Data Workshop with Consultant

Hello,

Please find attached a draft agenda for the Technical Data workshop scheduled for the morning of Friday April 27^th.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact Shireene Hale-360-370-7569.

I shall be back in the country on the 26^th and present on the morning of the 27^th.

If you have specific technical questions for the consultants that are not covered by the agenda, then please submit the questions in writing toshireeneh@sanjuanco.com by April 20^th so they can be passed along to the consultants ahead of time.

It would be ideal if your concerns/questions included the following:

a. Specific citations/references where appropriate.

b. A brief description of the preferred resolution.

c. A concise analysis showing how the proposed changes would impact the goals, policies and potential regulation changes of the SMP?

Thanks for your time.

Respectfully,

Colin

Colin Maycock, AICP

Planner IV

San Juan County Community Development and Planning

PO Box 947, Friday Harbor, WA

98250

Phone: 360-370-7573

Email: colinm@sanjuanco.com