Helping the Town out

Greater La Conner, within and beyond the town's boundaries, is blessed with a plethora of volunteers. La Conner’s arts and park commission members are the institutionalists the government and surrounding community are fortunate to have.

Their missions are prescribed by the town’s municipal code. Members take their roles seriously, committing to them term after term and, like church choirs, bond with each other in purpose and friendship. They toil in general obscurity, their efforts and results occasionally noticed by the town council or local newspaper.

The town has a variety of other volunteers, of course, including the First on First group, which organized in support of merchants in the early, dark days of the pandemic.

Last September John Leaver, then a council member and a First on First advocate, applied to the Town for $21,800, proposing a sculpture for Gilkey Square conceived as a tourist magnet, to generate social media photographs. Town council approved the project as a package and done deal, with the design, materials and artist already chosen.

But it was too much too fast. Consulted later, the art commissioners said it was not art, the 11 foot height was out of scale and did not fit Gilkey Square and more attention to design and placement was needed. Park commissioners concurred. Each commission soundly rejected the project, which has been rebranded a “marketing icon.” All parties agree it is not art.

Next week or in March council will look at the proposal's design more closely. When it is ready to decide, the council will vote for approval. Their decision will be one of both process and pricing. The $21,800 is 12% of the hotel motel tax funded budget, way more than any organization other than the Chamber of Commerce and the public restrooms received this year.

Council approved funding a fellow member’s project without pausing for reflection on the scale or scope of the project or considering asking its institutional volunteers, the members of the arts and parks commissions, to review and offer citizen perspectives from their subject expertise.

Residents saw council decide the 2020-2021 purchase and sale of the Hedlin ball field property as insular, lacking citizen input. Here, the commissions have now provided “expert witness” input. More, they are giving the council the opportunity to reflect and discern, to ask what for and what else can we do.

Council can respond, for instance, that last year’s record sales tax revenues prove that tourists obviously love La Conner, that encouragement to visit can take a different direction. They may consider that $21,800 can be a major investment in a thoughtfully planned, long term public art competition that leans on La Conner’s history as a fine arts mecca and uses its citizen volunteer resources and expertise to again put the town on the map for exploring and enjoying art in the public square.

Volunteers are critical and crucial to all institutions and organizations. Leadership that ignores the advice offered by citizens it has empowered to serve risks losing its volunteers and diminishing its own mantle of authority.

The marketing icon project may be brought up Feb. 22 or it will be placed on a March meeting agenda.

Citizens can certainly weigh in at any time. That is what democracy is, after all.

And, perhaps a hard question: Will Councilmembers Rick Dole and Annie Taylor, as First on First organizers, abstain from voting on – while able to discuss –funding an application from the organization First on First?