San Enumclaw County

The long awaited departure of Sam Gibboney from the Department of Community Development (DCD) finally occurred today when our County Manager reassigned Gibboney to Public Works, from whence she came in November 2013. To get Gibboney back into Public Works, our County created a new position for her as Deputy Director ... so since departing Public Works two years ago, and then doing such a bang-up job in Planning, Gibboney heads back to Public Works in a higher position than she left (she was previously Solid Waste Program Manager).

To backfill Gibboney's position at DCD, the County hired Erika Shook from Enumclaw. Mike Thomas, our County Manager, came from Enumclaw. Our new Hearing Examiner is also the Hearing Examiner from Enumclaw. Bear in mind that our County's mysterious unofficial wetland scientist, "JT", also originates from Enumclaw.

Before Enumclaw, Shook worked for Triad Associates, and before that she worked for Snohomish County. She graduated in 1992 from the University of Washington with a BA in Urban Planning, so it makes perfect sense that another urban planner would end up in a rural county of only 16,000 people (not). According to the Draft 2016 San Juan County budget, we have 18 full-time people planning our future in DCD.

Apparently, Shook was hired without any public announcement of an open position nor using any competitive hiring process that we are aware of. While we do not know who our County might hire next, odds are they're currently working for Enumclaw. Enumclaw now serves as the minor league farm system for San Juan County government employees.

Anyone want to take bets on how long before Triad Associates gets a contract with Public Works too?

Conservation District Watch: The Stacked Deck

The San Juan Islands Conservation District has merged with the San Juan County Stewardship Network and the Puget Sound Partnership's ECONet. Moreover, the non-profit Madrona Institute and the PSP's Action Agenda Oversight Group (AAOG)/Local Implementation Organization (LIO) have incestuous links to the Conservation District too.

Let's play a shortened version of 20 questions ... let's try 6 questions:

1. Who is head of the San Juan Islands Conservation District?
2. Who is on the steering committee of the Stewardship Network?
3. Who is the founder and head of the Madrona Institute, which acts as the fiscal agent for the Stewardship Network, receiving a modest 5% to 10% cut on all grants?
4. Who endorsed Pratt, Stephens, and Byers for Council?
5. Who has been trying to take County programs and grants away from the County (e.g., Salmon Lead Entity Coordinator)?
6. Who has been discussing #5 above with Jamie Stephens in relative secrecy?

The answer to all of the above is Ron Zee, who is part-creator, part-manipulator of a giant hairball bureaucracy that is a wolf (PSP) in Conservation District clothing. At the end of this post is an effort to depict this hairball with a graph, but honestly, it's an impossible task. Complexity is their disguise. It's a Gordian Knot of bureaucratic self-interest and conflicts of interest. Nevertheless, I hope readers begin to get an idea who the real power is behind this bureaucracy ... and it's not our elected officials.

The Stewardship Network is comprised of 24 organizations, including 5 separate County entities. The Steering Committee for the Stewardship Network is comprised of 4 people: Zee, Linda Lyshall (who works for Zee at the Conservation District), Stephanie Buffum of the Friends, and Lincoln Bormann of the Land Bank. This Steering Committee recently appointed Julia Vouri to be the coordinator of the Stewardship Network/ECONet "under the umbrella of the Conservation District."  The Conservation District Board had no say in the matter. Julia Vouri is the wife of Mike Vouri, who happens to be on the Advisory Board of the Madrona Institute. The Madrona Institute was founded and is headed by Zee. He has put together a 4-person Madrona Institute Board (himself, Land Bank Commissioner Jim Skoog, League of Women Voters member Sarah Crosby, and Elaine Kendall of the Ag Guild ... Zee's wife). In addition, Zee has assembled an 18-member Madrona Institute Advisory Committee that includes Linda Lyshall (again), Lincoln Bormann (again), the previously mentioned Mike Vouri, Nick Teague (National Monument/BLM Manager), and Katie Loring, wife of Friends' attorney Kyle Loring who Zee appointed as Associate Board member of the Conservation District.

Given the weight of all these heavily-networked advisors and board members, anyone who thinks the measly Conservation District Board has any power is at best an optimist and at worst a damn fool. The Conservation District Board consists of 5 members, two of whom are appointed by the State. There are just three elected members to the Conservation District Board in an otherwise sprawling complex of self-appointed greased-palm special interests.

And that's not even including the links between the Conservation District and the AAOG/LIO, whose links to the Conservation District are so cozy that the Conservation District has an office reserved for them in their new building. Who's on the AAOG/LIO, aside from the Conservation District itself? Let's see ... the Implementation Committee of the AAOG/LIO consists of a further 12 organizations, including the Marine Resources Committee (again), the Salmon Lead Entity Coordinator (again), the Stewardship Network (again), three County departments (Public Works, CD&P, Health), the Water Resources Committee, the Town, and 3 tribes.

In this impossible-to-follow Gordian Knot, self-appointed Zee-cronies are represented multiple times while the public is shut out. Let's look at the Salmon Lead Entity (SLE), for example. The Salmon Lead Entity Coordinator is Barbara Rosenkotter, who was the Treasurer for Byers campaign (endorsed by then-Democratic-Party-head Zee). Although Rosenkotter ostensibly works for the County, she represents the Stewardship Network, the MRC, and the AAOG/LIO Implementation Committee ... and she has been working stealthily with Zee, the Northwest Straits Commission/Foundation, and the tribes to move her position and State funding to the Conservation District.

There you have it ... 24 organizations in the Stewardship Network, 18 advisors to the Madrona Institute, 4 board members of the Madrona Institute, 13 members to the AAOG/LIO Implementation Committee, 2 State appointees to the Conservation District ... and just 3 elected members of the Conservation District Board. No independently elected official to the Conservation District or even to our County Council has a clue how they're being played by this bureaucracy of mass destruction. No matter how improved the Conservation District electoral system might become as a result of anticipated reforms and lawsuits, the fix is already in ... the elected positions don't even matter anymore ... the Conservation District is machine headquarters where the business of the PSP and Friends is done. The Conservation District is hopelessly broken as a representative body.

And this cabal will pass judgment on whether we, as a County, are good Puget Sound Partners. That's important because whether we are good Puget Sound Partners will matter when our County tries to obtain funding from the State. There is statutory language to that effect. Given the hearings this past week about Conservation District funding, the County Council may be under the misapprehension that they are funding the Conservation District, but in reality, it's the reverse. The County is being set up to be squeezed by the Conservation District, the PSP, and the Friends over State money. If we don't follow their whims, our State funding will be threatened.

And despite the high-minded labels (e.g., Salmon Lead Entity) and the strident, tearful pleas of bureaucratic insiders crying about the environment, absolutely none of the bureaucratic whims have anything to do with improving ecological health. The taxes and grants devoted to bureaucratic eco-efforts aren't funding on-the-ground "save the salmon" or "save the planet" initiatives ... they're funding "save the bureaucracy" initiatives.

Support the Conservation District and save a self-interested bureaucrat ... and maybe even earn a modest 5% to 10% cut for Zee at the same time.  Now that's environmental stewardship San Juan style.

Click to enlarge. Right-click to download.

A Gaggle Of Scandals

Scandals here are de rigeur, and it remains to be seen whether the new Council and Manager can do anything to stop them.

• Planning CAO/SMP Debacle --Virtually this entire blog has been devoted to the CAO/SMP mess. Shireene Hale has been at the center of the ongoing CAO nightmare the entire time. No matter what the GMHB ruling, the Trojan Heron doesn't see much improvement happening to the CAO process unless Hale's involvement is summarily halted. Hale has demonstrated repeatedly that her primary interest, as a planner, is to stop everything. She has displayed outright contempt for public participation too. Colin Maycock is nominally in charge of the SMP, and while he's no Shireene Hale, he has been referred to by Stephanie Buffum as being "on our Team." That does not bode well.

• Public Works and Stormwater -- Speaking of Shireene Hale, her husband, Ed, is in charge of the County Stormwater Program. The County Stormwater Program has been an open sore for years. We could talk about the (non) applicability of the stormwater manual to our rural circumstances, or the murky logic behind the justification for our stormwater utility and fees, but the ire of many citizens is most easily aroused when discussion turns to the Eastsound Stormwater Facility (i.e., the Eastsound mosquito hatchery) or other Public Works stormwater projects ... all typically overbuilt, poorly designed, ugly, grant-funded, and largely useless. Ed Hale appears to have been the mastermind of all of it.

• Public Works Road Projects -- Nearly every new road construction project undertaken by the County in the last few years has been a treatise on mismanagement. For instance, the Lopez Fisherman Bay Road improvement project cost millions of dollars, was way over-budget, required the cutting down of beautiful old trees, necessitated hideous wetland mitigation (Lopez's version of the Eastsound mosquito hatchery), nearly doubled the width of the road ... and at the end of all of the "improving," the speed limit was lowered by ten miles per hour by vote of the County Council that authorized the expensive improvements in the first place.  On Orcas right now, the Mt. Baker Road improvement project is a daily banquet of blunders ... almost severing a high voltage power line, having a road height two feet higher than planned as a result of using LiDAR instead of an actual survey, and having to undertake "unforeseen" wetland mitigation. When finished, Mt. Baker Road will look more like an airport runway than a country lane. And Mt. Baker Road is just a warm up for the Spring Point Bridge project on the west end of Orcas. Responsibility for this maddening empire-building seems to rest squarely on the shoulders of Rachel Dietzman, County Engineer. In the eyes of many, Dietzman is arrogant, incompetent, adversarial, and hell-bent on suburbanizing and highway-izing every charming country road in the county. She also has a penchant for cutting residents off from utility access. Dietzman, whose husband is also on the infamous Marine Resources Committee (MRC), is another one that has to go.

• Conservation District Power Play -- The goal of the Machine during the last election was to take over the County Council while Ron Zee consolidated power at the Conservation District, which is a separate district of State government. The elections didn't turn out as the Machine had planned, but Boss Zee has moved forward with transforming the Conservation District into the pubicly-funded Kaaba of the Friendly Machine, with all the grant corruption that goes along with it. Zee's idea is to take grants away from the County and funnel them through the Conservation District instead. Zee is moving forward with transferring responsibilities for the Salmon Lead Entity, the LIO/AAOG, the Marine Resources Committee, and parts of the Agricultural Resources Committee. Already, the Conservation District has moved into new larger digs, hired Linda Lyshall, designated an office for Barbara Rosenkotter, raised the specter of appointing Kyle Loring as an associate (unelected) Board member, and made big plans for itself ... unilaterally ... without informing the County that it's taking money, programs, and people away from them.

And there are other scandals, such as staff who lie to Council ... unmitigated conflicts of interest ... and threats of retaliation to employees who attempt to make things better.

We'll be elaborating on each of these areas in the coming days.