BD Council argues over agenda, legal services, and much more

By Kathleen Kear

Thirty seconds into the Black Diamond City Council meeting on Thursday, April 21, Councilmember Pat Pepper moved to substitute the Council Agenda put together by Mayor Carol Benson for a new agenda Pepper wanted instead. That began a lengthy heated argument, as to which agenda would be used for the meeting.

While the Mayor had submitted her agenda 9 days before the meeting so it could be properly advertised and according to the new Council Rules, Pepper did not submit her new agenda until Friday, 4 days prior to the Thursday Council meeting. The heated back and forth arguments complete with many Points of Order drew numerous headshakes from the audience including one point that Pepper stated, “Councilmember does not question other Councilmembers.”

Ten minutes into the emotionally charged argument, Pepper stated, “Excuse me. Point of Order. Councilmember will be courteous,” which drew more laughs as well as a statement from Councilmember Janie Edelman stating, “Seriously, This is like a Saturday Night Live skit. I cannot believe this.”

Weaving their way through the agenda debate as to which one was approved and which was not, Pepper called for the vote – “Point of Order, it’s time to call for the vote.”

“What about the debate. I had my hand raised to make a statement,” said Edelman, who was then recognized by Benson. “Because I find it very curious that every time you guys try to force something down our throat, that you’ve not coordinated with Councilmember Deady or myself, you end up wanting to suspend the rules in order to push this stuff through. When we want…”

“Point of Order,” said Pepper.

“Wait a minute,” said Edelman in the background.

“Please do not impugn the motives of fellow Councilmembers,” said Pepper.

“Oh, I’d like to,” stated Edelman. “Let me tell you…”

“Point of Order. Courtesy,” stated Pepper, sending the audience into laughs.

“Do we need to have an instant playback of what you’re saying, because you’re not following the rules,” stated Edelman. “You’re not following the Council rules that Derdowski generated for you guys to follow. You have these made up authorities that are not in the Revised Code of Washington and you don’t even bother to recognize that when Tamie Deady and I sign off on something for the Mayor that we have the same authority that you three have. We just don’t have the majority vote – and what you’ve managed to do is to shut out the minority, which goes against the Revised Code of Washington.”

Councilmember/Mayor Pro Tem Erika Morgan pointed out that in the revised new Council Rules, that the Council Agenda be approved by two particular people – the Council President (Pat Pepper) and the Mayor Pro Tem (Erika Morgan). She went on to state that if other Councilmembers wanted items put on the agenda, that they were to contact either Pepper or Morgan. “Other processes for getting things on the agenda that have followed rules that we’ve had in the past are now no longer the rules that we’re following now.”

Approximately 15 minutes later and when told by the Mayor that the Council would needed to move on with the agenda, Pepper called for the vote on the agenda, Pepper stated that they would not move on until a vote was taken on the substitute agenda. In an action that would seem to take authority away from the Mayor, Morgan called out asking for all those in favor. Three minutes later following some more heated argument, Pepper, not wishing to move on until votes were taken on three motions, stated, “No. Point of Order. The presiding officer does not get to control the meeting. The presiding officer is the presiding officer at the meeting, but you don’t get to control the meeting.”

Not wishing to answer the question from Deady as to whom then controls the meeting; Pepper went back to the three questions. At that point and ignoring the Mayor, Pepper took over asking each Councilmember for their vote on each question. At one point when told by the Mayor that the Mayor was the Chair of the meeting, Pepper told the Mayor “And you’re not chairing the meeting. You don’t get to say what happens.” Twenty-three minutes later while ignoring the Mayor’s ordering that Pepper was out of order, Pepper, Morgan and Councilmember Brian Weber voted for their agenda thereby ending the approximately 25 minute heated argument of which agenda would be used.

From there, the nearly three and a half hour meeting did not get any better. During Public Comment, Liz LeRoy, Owner’s Representative for the Enumclaw School District, read a letter into the record from Michael Nelson, Superintendent. The letter cited concern about the District being able to meet its projected timeline for rebuilding Black Diamond Elementary School. “We recently learned that the City’s Community Development Department is unable, without the immediate assistance of outside resources, to confirm that it can meet our Project review timeline.”

Noting that the City’s timely review of the project is critical to the success of the project, the District pointed out that the site plan review application had been approved on April 5th. Meanwhile, the Building Permit was submitted on March 16th in anticipation of meeting the time line of May 13th being the receipt of the City’s preliminary permit review comments so that by June 3rd there could possibly be an issuance of the building permit. The District also pointed out that if the City failed to “provide for adequate resources to review the Black Diamond Elementary School project permit could result in the District’s loss of state assistance dollars for the Project…”

Working into the business part of the Council meeting, following an Executive Session, a resolution from the Mayor’s agenda (that the Council approved of suspending their rules to bring up for a vote) called for approving of the collective bargaining agreement with Public Works Unit. The resolution passed unanimously and was greeted with a large round of applause from the audience.

The happy feeling quickly dissolved when Weber stated that he wanted to table the $10,000 claim check to DKS that had been on the Mayor’s agenda since March 7th. He changed the table motion to postpone until the May 5th Council meeting. When asked why the continued postponement, he stated that he had additional questions he had sent in and would be addressing the item after reviewing the information at the May 2nd Budget Committee meeting.

During the DKS discussion, Morgan stated, “What I need to see, and what Weber and I need to look at is the exact train of negotiation over these amounts of money because what we are unclear about what they are and what the agreements were and we need to have it documented in the City archives what this train over this bill was and is, because it looks to us as though there’s possibility that there’s some ‘funny business’ in there. And I’ve heard this from several and many different people from the public. And we need to protect the City from any of these sorts of claims by firsthand knowledge of what the agreements were, when they were made, so that we can have a clear understanding financially of where we are going forward. And I’m sorry that I’m so picky, but I’ve been sued several times before and I’m just trying to take care of the City’s interests.”

Mayor Benson took exception to Morgan’s comments stating that the entire procedure was run through the attorney and that the process was approved so that there was no “funny business” going on. Benson also took issue with Morgan’s disparaging remark of “funny business” toward a staff member. She went on to reassure that there was no “funny business.”

Later in the evening during the Mayor’s Report, Barbara Kincad, Community Development and Natural Resources, was invited to come up and give her report. After touching on the importance of passing the resolution of a new building official as well as “I also briefly need to say that the department we’re struggling and in fact I struggle as I sit here doing my job to my professional capacity to hear someone think that I’m somehow doing some ‘funny business.’ That is not ok. The DKS situation – we provided you what you asked. As you know when you’re working on agreements, the resolution that Council authorized the mayor and the mayor’s agent is to execute those agreements. That includes termination if necessary, it includes negotiating certain things – scope of work – and that is what I was doing with the DKS/BergerABAM and a lot of what goes on is done orally, we have good documentation …..the attorney Ms. Morris was fine with the way that we talked that through and worked it out before it reached the level of dispute, which again really is a benefit to the citizens here, not to get to that point. There’s some propriety involved in terms of how much of the internal negotiations really ought to be aired out in public, not because it’s ‘funny business,’ but because you raise a level of risk to do harm to both parties. And we avoided that very well.”

For the rest of the story go to www.voiceofthevalley.com (Sorry, story was too long to be able to print it all on this site)