It’s almost too easy to entertain by simply reporting the day-to-day doings of the Three-Wise-Men ruling junta of the Port of Bellingham. This has never stopped us before. It will not now.
But let’s begin with a plaudit for a change:
In this week’s episode of (Way, Way) Below Deck, Salish Sea Edition, one of the port’s commissioners, Ken Bell, turned on his mic Tuesday night with a couple thoughts that not only had merit, but showed a rare dash of institutional self-awareness.
Bell’s first suggestion was that the port host an open house/public forum (a charette) to educate residents and answer questions about plans and operations. It sounded like a clear recognition that the agency in charge of local waterfront redevelopment, not to mention the local airport and other vital infrastructure, long ago veered off the taxiway in terms of public opinion.
After 20 years of mostly non-action and scarcely little vision — resulting in a grand waterfront redevelopment consisting of a dirt bike track and a scattered array of shipping container businesses, the capper was the recent controversy about shoreside scrap metal recycling. A long history of ineptitude has come to a head, and Bell at least nodded toward that political reality.
(It’s worth noting that one other commissioner also echoed Bell’s acknowledgment, made during a discussion about how best to explain port actions to the public, that “the whole point here is that we don’t know what we’re doing,” which, frankly, is nice to finally have on the record.)
Should commission send size back to voters?
A subsequent suggestion went a step further down the path to real-world politics: Bell, laying his tongue on the third rail of port politics, predicted that a public move to expand the commission from three members to five is likely to be resurrected and foisted upon the port, as soon as someone can print out the voter petitions.
The commission president’s history with this touchy topic is fairly deep; Bell presumably knows that few ordinary citizens likely care what port commissioners themselves think about the matter. They are in fact the problem to be solved, not part of the solution.
But Bell wondered whether the port commission itself should at least discuss exercising its legal authority to put the matter to voters, to preclude the sharpening of electoral pitchforks by angry villagers.
It’s a legitimate point. If, as he explained, it’s clear that the public is ready to take matters into its own hands (it is), it would be wiser for the port — especially its non-politicized staff, who do most of the heavy lifting in the organization — to avoid a yard-signs circus that might result from a public uprising.
Notably, the notion to put it on a near-future agenda got at least a lukewarm nod from a second commissioner, Michael Shepard. And as we all know, with current rules this constitutes the inkling of a majority.
Whether the commission will, in fact, open its own door to a public vote on a matter last taken up in 2012 (it failed by less than a percentage point) remains to be seen. But Bell’s recognition of the political reality was at least a small starter flame of a clue. Huzzah.
Not so fast
And then right on cue came the third commissioner, Bobby Briscoe, with a bucket of bile and a hellbent obsession with dousing.
Aiming the first splash at Bell’s proposed attempt to bolster the port’s shredded public image via an open house, Briscoe launched into a tirade about a recent email missive from port critic Scott Jones, of the local group Save the Waterfront.
Briscoe called Jones, who had penned an appropriately mocking rebuke of the port’s spending $100,000 in public money to repair its own deserved image for squandering public money, a “pathetic dumbass.” He then proclaimed that “I really don’t give a shit” whether the public is bothered by that juvenile characterization, given that he’s “not a politically correct guy.”
(Note to recently contracted, self-described PR savior Peter Frazier: Good luck with all this! Have you cashed the check yet?)
Briscoe’s screed was a level of clueless arrogance rarely seen in these parts. Most elected members of even lower-tier sewer districts have the common sense God gave a goat not to attack constituents via open mics and cameras.
Briscoe, a commercial fisherman from Blaine who has confessed to being “rankled” by criticism before, should do the local world a favor and resign, avoiding both that problem and his apparent difficulty finding time to attend port meetings in person.
Briscoe blathered that the port’s image problem is a faux crisis. And if the port had just hired Frazier to clean up its mess, he asked, why bother reaching out to the public directly?
Briscoe, perhaps unaware that people have jobs, soccer practice and other stuff at 5 p.m. on weekdays, looked around a mostly empty room and wondered out loud: If there’s really so much public dissatisfaction with us, where are the throngs with torches?
Obvious answer: After the scrap-metal imbroglio, most folks have long ago given up on the commission as a reasonable pathway to problem-solving — a conclusion not at all crazy given the board’s historic proclivity for welcoming public input with the visible eagerness of a cat held above a bathtub.
Who wants to waste their valuable time pleading with this triumvarate — especially at the risk of being branded a “pathetic dumbass” on streaming television by a hilariously thin-skinned commissioner?
Anyone want to go first?
A stream of tortured logic
It got better: Briscoe later doubled down on this initial cluelessness, whizzing all over the tiresome (to him) notion of a five-member commission.
With the present Old West scheme of Government by Three Guys (in its entire century of existence, the port has had a single woman commissioner), Briscoe insisted, all port business must be discussed in open sessions, to comply with state open-meetings laws. His take: This provides ultimate transparency!
Of course, any thinking observer of government knows the opposite is true: Aside from the obvious benefits of broader representation by more-independent, less-industry-connected public servants, larger bodies have another advantage, one later acknowledged by Bell: It allows a couple members to meet and talk about issues — like, just spitballing here, getting a decent airline for the airport? — without sending out a public-meeting notice.
If you believe Briscoe, of course, these sorts of ex-parte conversations currently never happen, because that would be illegal.
Fortunately there’s a fresh chance for all of us to explore this subject. Before dust could settle from CDN’s story about Briscoe’s taunts this week, an official Port of Bellingham Media Alert arrived in our inbox:
“Two or more Commissioners of the Port of Bellingham plan to attend a BBQ this Saturday, details below.”
Why do we, the people, care? Because with the three-guys structure, anytime two or more are gathered together in Rob Fix’s name (or for any reason), a legal public quorum notice is required.
As usual, “No formal action will be taken” at this affair, hosted by a Working Waterfront Coalition founder, the port assures. Anyone else concerned about the informal?
There’s one way to find out. As the notice specifies, the Saturday cookout in question is at Jim and Kathy Kyle’s place out in Deming. Starts at 2 p.m.
BYOB, and keep any bad thoughts to your pathetic, dumbass self.
Ron Judd's column appears weekly; ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com; @roncjudd.
