Meeting to hear citizen views

By Linda Talman

La Conner’s Town Council had a barely announced special meeting on Oct. 28. The meeting was illogical. The issue stemmed from a request of a group of hopeful residents to have a special planning commission meeting Nov. 1 to look for common ground for the next year. The planning commission would have set the agendas. Pretty evil, huh?

A council person who wasn't at the October planning commission meeting spoke as if he actually knew what had happened there (he didn't) and persuaded other members to vote his way. Their bad.

The information quoted by this council person was misleading.

The planning commission meeting was not recorded and not zoomed. Their bad. No one knows what took place.

A perfectly orchestrated disaster.

The requested special meeting for Nov. 1 was supposed to have been advertised by the town but it was not. Their bad.

The complaining councilmember said that the special meeting would have excluded the public. Is that why they had a special meeting on the 28th? Delicious irony, huh? The council has a special meeting to complain about the legally requested meeting with the planning commission to have a special hybrid meeting on Nov. 1.

The regular chair would have set the agenda for the procedure. I believed we made that clear.

And what are the issues bothering this council? Is it the affordable housing? Expanded community notices? Having the planning commission decide about Air BnBs, etc? I don't get why we suffered this attack.

It made me sad to hear council doubted the legality of that planning commission vote. It made me mad to be strongly insulted by the planning commission chair (absent at the ill-fated meeting); the chair – who had told us all at the meeting before the last that she didn't want to have two meetings a month because she could always hold a special meeting. That she wanted us to stay involved. The group actually applauded her for that speech. That meeting was recorded.

At the Oct. 28 meeting the planning commission chair stated that I should know better. Yes, I should have known better than to believe that we would be on a better path forward – where the planning commission would actually have a conversation about the future of the town – a hope inspired by the community meeting of the last month. It would have been the first time code ideas could have come from the community and been accepted or not. But they would have been discussed by all interested attendees..

How deeply disappointing.

Talman served on the La Conner Planning Commission for decades and has lived in town even longer.