01/15/2008: "Ferry Advisory Committee Hit By A Squall"

The FAC (Ferry Advisory Committee) ran into some turbulent waters on Monday (Jan 14) when they forgot to post a formal notice of a meeting they held in Friday Harbor.

The County Council was holding a Regular Work Session Meeting in the new Legislative Building when members of the FAC wandered by on their way to their meeting in the same building. This took the Council -and attending members of the press- by surprise, and when it became apparent the FAC had not advertise their meeting as required by their own rules a couple of council members became a bit concerned.

Councilman Ranker said this was not acceptable, and put in a call to Prosecutor Randy Gaylord. Gaylord researched the question, came over to the Council meeting, and said that while the FAC is not subject to the Open Meetings Act, their charter did require them to advertise their meetings.

While the Council was awaiting Gaylord’s ruling, Ranker became increasingly upset, and said the FAC would have to be told to not hold the meeting. Councilman Lichter and Peterson also expressed their concern, but cautioned Ranker the council should not overreact to what Peterson said may simply be an oversight.

Lichter suggested Council Chairman Rosenfeld simply drop in and advised the FAC members that their meeting was illegal because they had not advertise it, and they would need to desist.

Rosenfeld walked over to the meeting, talked to them, returned to the Council meeting, and after the ongoing discussion of the issue between Ranker, Lichter and Peterson had died down, said in a soft voice “What do you do when they refuse to end the meeting?”

Rosenfeld and the Island Guardian were both informed by the FAC members that they had simply forgot to advertise, would not forget in the future, but would continue the meeting for discussion purposes only, and take no action.

This set Ranker off again, and also did not sit well with some of the other Council members. It was decided to draft a letter to the FAC advising them of the importance of following their rules, and to express the Councils concern that the FAC had failed to suspend the meeting when told to do so by the Council.

FAC Chairman MacLeod told the Island Guardian that “there are emergent, pressing issues related to WSF's statement that we will have the Hiyu "indefinitely" (see related story below) that we had to discuss now, and we were all there, which is a hard thing to arrange and we weren't going to go home and wait for two weeks' public notice to be given.”

He added that “the oversight in not having the council clerk post the meeting is mine.” While MacLeod acknowledged his oversight, he asked for a vote by the members present if they wished to suspend, or continue the meeting for discussion purposes, but take no action. All agreed to continue the meeting.