When everyone wins

Why do smart and successful and experienced people set themselves up for heartache, strife and failure – and pain? A journalist in Akron, Ohio titled a book of essays about his people “The Hard Way On Purpose.” That’s the Akron of LeBron James and the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Browns, the rust bowl region where defeat gets snatched from victory year after year.

Here, in our corner of the world, there’s a skeleton board of trustees at MoNA and across the channel a board of directors running the Shelter Bay Community. Each group seems to be outdoing the other in making their collective lives difficult.

At MoNA, the decision to return the auction to La Conner is a critical step toward survival. The monumental task of executing a successful auction weighs heavily on the board and staff. There is $500,000 to raise by year’s end, almost $56,000 a month. On top of that, the board will be hiring and orienting an interim director.

An invitation to have the resigned board members rejoin will bring experienced, willing hands to the task while signaling to the larger community the board is compassionate, cooperative and reconciling. Are negotiations taking place?

On the west side of the channel, the Shelter Bay board seems intent on running up huge capital costs while turning on the meter to protracted, expensive litigation. The Water Agreement with the Town runs through perpetuity. Perpetuity seems a well-defined term. If the Town sticks to the common definition of perpetuity, proves its water system has excess capacity to Shelter Bay and refuses opening up the contract to negotiation, what is the long game victory for this Board?

Will they have to ask the community they represent to dig deep to cover legal fees for litigation the board initiates? Is there a groundswell of residential support to pick this fight? If so, no one has informed the Weekly News that they want to pay into a war chest for lawyers.

If the Shelter Bay board, its committees and consultants had made the case that water from the Tribe was the indisputable best decision, that would be one thing. But that is not where the paper trail leads. Instead, the current letter and memo exchange between Town and Community ends with Shelter Bay’s name on a lawyer’s letterhead stationary.

Bait and switch might not be the right phrase, but to the Town’s question of cost-share payment for Phase I Planning, Shelter Bay’s lawyer answered with an unexpected non sequitur: “the Town needs Shelter Bay to make a decision on whether it will continue purchasing water.” No. the Town has an agreement – a contract – stating water will be purchased in perpetuity. That is not a decision the Town is waiting for. It is,instead, the raising of a problem that can cause both sides a lot of grief, time and money.

There is a way out: reconciliation, mediation and resolution. We can do it. You can do it. Each of these boards can reach across the table, take hands, reconcile and call it success.

Our local disputes are much simpler than the differences between our North Korean and federal counterparts.

Mediators are much cheaper than lawyers. They an offer an option of resolution and reconciliation rather than victory or a stinging, expensive, drawn out defeat.