Is water agreement leakproof?

In researching the 2018 water dispute between Shelter Bay and the Town of La Conner in the Weekly News, searching for “perpetuity” turns up articles from that winter, including an editorial. Perpetuity is a word not often used.

The 2011 agreement between the institutions states: “This contract shall remain in force in perpetuity or until such date as the parties hereto shall mutually agree to terminate it.”

Rather than write a new editorial, here is the March 2018 one, revised to edit out the now-past train wreck between the board of the Museum of Northwest Art and its community, deleted to not distract from the water issue. The original title: “When everyone wins.” From 2018:

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 then Cleveland Indians and Browns, the rust bowl region where defeat gets snatched from the jaws of victory year after year.

Across the Swinomish Channel a board of directors managing the Shelter Bay Community seems to be making their collective lives difficult. The board seems intent on running up huge capital costs while turning on the meter to protracted, expensive litigation. Its 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 their 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 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 for a new water main, 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 a contract stating water will be purchased in perpetuity. There is no decision for the Town to make. It is, instead, the raising of a problem that can cause both sides a lot of grief, time and money.

Maybe Mayor Ramon Hayes is right that the water contact is a very good one. Will the Shelter Bay board argue with the history of the original negotiations, that the term of perpetuity was inserted at their insistence?

Objectively, and the Weekly News observed this, the Town made repeated requests in 2017, before the water main broke, to finalize the cost-share agreement.

There is a way out: reconciliation, mediation and resolution. They can do it. The Shelter Bay board can reach across the Channel, take hands, reconcile and call it a success.

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

Our local disputes are simpler than the differences between our national political parties and their most fervent followers.

And now, in 2022, the Shelter Bay general manager resigned.