Monday, February 23, 2015 -- The Fourth Meeting of the Charter Review Commission

The third meeting of the Whatcom County Charter Review Commission was held on Monday, February 9, 2015. This meeting was hosted by the Lummi Nation at the Lummi Admin Center.

The meeting was called to order at approximately 6:30 pm by commission chairman, Ben Elenbaas.

After the flag salute and roll call, the floor was opened to public comments.

Whatcom County executive staff were on hand to answer questions about which non-profits have contracts or receive money from the county general fund, as requested by Cliff Langley and Barbara Ryan. It is a long list, and to prevent information overload, the commission asked for the top ten, or some other executive summary in a future report, rather than detail and classify every contract.

There were many people lined up to protest "amendment 7" as listed on the agenda. (We have posted articles about it, here and here.) Not all of the testimony was printed, but we will publish the text of the public testimony as (or if) it it becomes available. You can hear the entire testimony in the audio transcription, below.

Stoney Bird brought up some more about proportional voting, which invited some interesting discussion. Watch for developments.

There were a few testimonials for and against Equitable Representation by District.

The commission discussed and passed Representation by District, and deferred the rest of the amendments to future meetings. The reason for this is that the public testimony took up more time than anticipated. There was some discussion of whether the current districting and allocation of councilors could be modified to enhance the effectiveness (or attractiveness) of Representation by District. Note that passage does not guarantee that this amendment cannot be revisited. The modified commission rules make it possible for any commissioner to bring this up for more debate. 

Ben Elenbaas had to leave at 7:30, so the gavel was transferred to Joe Elenbaas.

Here is the audio from the full meeting:

 

Joe Elenbaas gaveled the meeting adjourned at 9:30 pm.