BD Council changes Mayor's agenda with their own agenda

By Kathleen Kear

Opening moments of the Black Diamond City Council meeting on Thursday, April 7, found Councilmember Pat Pepper wishing to wave Council Rules in order to bring a New Agenda forward.

The New Agenda came forward through a resolution – adopting, recognizing, and documenting the Council approved agenda for its April 7 Council meeting – with 11 “Whereas” paragraphs and no Agenda Billing with supporting information. Sixteen minutes later following a debate between the three Councilmembers Pepper, Erika Morgan and Brian Weber and Councilmembers Janie Edelman and Tamie Deady, the three Councilmembers waved Council Rules in order to vote the New Agenda in that included elements of Mayor Carol Benson’s Agenda.

During public comment, Bob Edelman accused Morgan of lying after she had made a statement following her incident at the prior Council meeting regarding leaving an Executive Session. She stated that she only said hello to Kristen Bryant and did not talk with her. However, when told about a video of the area showing them talking together, Morgan stated that she stood by her statement.

Moving on, when a request was made to move an Executive Session up to an earlier part of the meeting, Pepper argued that the Executive Session was at the end of the agenda and that is where it need to happen. However, the New Agenda Executive Session was merely noted as “Executive Session:” without any identifying reason for the session. The Mayor provided the reason for the Executive Session in her original agenda that was replaced by Pepper, Weber and Morgan’s New Agenda. It was pointed out that prior to the April 7th Council meeting, Erika Morgan and Pat Pepper had asked that the City’s Collective Bargaining attorney come to the meeting for an executive session.

Wanting to know why Pepper wanted the meeting at the end, Edleman went on to question why should the city pay for the attorney to come sit and listen to them fight. She suggested having the session early since nothing was going to be acted on from the session and then the attorney could just go home. Deady motioned to have the executive session early which was seconded by Edelman and then passed with Webber and Morgan supporting the action leaving Pepper with the only no vote.

Turning their attention to claim checks, Weber moved to table a check for $10,000 to DKS out of the claim checks marked for approval at the March 17th Council meeting, and then gave his approval for the Council to approve the rest of the checks. Once again, Edelman questioned why as the check was for a settlement on a claim involving BergerABAM and DKS. Community Development Director Barbara Kincaid’s was asked to come forward and then explained in a detailed explanation the reason for the check needing to go out. Weber continued to state that all his answers had not been answered from emails to Mayor Benson. Mayor Benson stated that she had responded to his emails. While Weber agreed that Kincaid’s explanation answered his questions, he still remained unwilling to give a pass to the check.

After reading through an unnumbered resolution that was presented without an Agenda Bill assignment and applicable supporting paperwork regarding the dismissal of a Robert Edelman Lawsuit, Councilmember Edelman objected to resolution. She stated that the case had already been dismissed and felt that it did not need to go to a committee for discussion. According to City Attorney Carol Morris, Robert had the right to ask for dismissal of his case and that there was no way the three councilmembers had the right to force him to continue with his lawsuit. Although Councilmember Edelman made a motion to pull the resolution completely off the agenda, the three councilmembers voted not to pull it, so it was sent to committee.

While in the process of opening a resolution regarding the City Newsletter and Communications to the Public, Pepper took objection to the Mayor’s comments and stated, “Point of Order, Point of Order. Mayor Benson, as the presiding Chair of the Council meeting, you are the presiding person and need to refrain from debating debate.” The comment left everyone scratching their heads wondering what she was talking about.

Three resolutions later, a subject regarding the termination of the City Attorney brought comments from Mayor Benson such as, “You have absolutely no authority to cancel the contract or cancel the attorney. I do. If you wanted to be mayor you should have run to be mayor.”

Pepper continued to move forward by asking that the council suspend Council Rules in order to take up the last resolution that had no Agenda Bill with supporting documents assigned. This prompted Morris to read out of the RCWs (Revised Code of Washington) supporting the fact that the three councilmembers could not cancel her contract – only the mayor could remove her.

After a long pause and while waiting for a vote, Morris said, “Please go ahead and act. I want to be sure and have this on the record for my whistleblowing complaint because you’re terminating me or purporting to terminate me because I’m giving advice that you don’t like and because I reported you to the King County Prosecutor’s Office and because I’ve been discussing what’s going on here with the State Auditor. So I can make a whistle blower complaint and sue the City based on what you are doing.”

When the vote was taken, Morgan, Pepper and Webber moved ahead with their vote to terminate Morris’s contract. Upon completion of the vote, Mayor Benson let them know that she would not be signing the resolution.

During department reports Seth Boettcher, Public Works Director, stated he would be derelict and remiss if he did not bring up the urgency of the chlorine system, which was listed on the Mayor’s agenda and not the New Agenda. He stated that in mid-2000 it was recognized that the existing spring infrastructure was inadequate for the city to grow very much at all. It was also well beyond its useful life. While staff for the most part has been able to repair needed repairs, they have been finding that parts have been harder and harder to obtain. Staff has also been finding that support from the company is not as much anymore as the city would like. Meanwhile, technology has improved significantly.

Boettcher went on to state that the system was too small and that it had difficulty in keeping up with the demands of the City’s growth. He pointed out that in 2015, the Council at that time approved a contract for the development of the design parameters and then advertised it for proposals in December.

With a company selected, Boettcher strongly encouraged the Council to approve the contract. He stated that if not acted on, there is a chance the contractor will not honor the bid any longer. He warned that if the City had to go back through the process because the bid expired, the Council would be looking at another 3-4 months delay with another 2 months on top of that to order the equipment. According to Boettcher, this would put the city at risk of a possible health issue as well as a large financial risk to the city. He pointed out that if the chlorine pump quits working, the city would be in emergency and Tacoma water would have to be turned on. Prior to being turned on, the lines would have to be flushed before Tacoma water could flow. This all would come with a large cost to the City. When a vote was taken, Morgan was the only Councilmember voting no.

Finance Director May Miller was next to come forward to let Council know that she was doing the best she could do and that she was still getting clean audits. However, she stated that “In my 39 years working in finance I’ve never ever encountered a situation where the Council was not approving the City’s bills.”

She questioned why anyone would want to risk not paying the bills. If they are not paid, various parts of City business would be at risk of being shut down such as phones being cut off, police officers not being able to purchase gas, having to remit gun permit funds to the state within a certain amount of days, not being able to pay the court and their various functions, and much more.

Next to come forward representing Teamsters 117 was Andy Williamson who reminded Council that staff was currently in hour 15 of their work day that included the Council meeting, and that 8 of the union members were still at the meeting serving them as public servants. He firmly stated that he would appreciate if the Council would honor a two year contract on the process of how the union and management work through its difficulties.

Williamson went on to state, “Please do not bring Union 117 Teamsters member’s issues into resolutions into ordinances or those in the paper. That is not the process that you signed in the contract representing the Teamster members.”

Big laugh of the night came with Brian Derdowski spoke to why he helped work on the Council Rules. After speaking for 5 minutes, Deady asked Derdowskski why there was not a work study on Council Rules.

“Why wouldn’t you, being a [former] King County Councilmember, want to be a part of the Council Rules being made – so why didn’t you say that it would have been a good idea to have a work study with all Councilmembers to go over these rules so that everybody has input on the rules. So it isn’t a…what did you call it? – a filibuster – so that two councilmembers bring rules and they just – Councilmember Webber just passed it without any input on those rules. So why is that a good idea?”

Derdowski replied, “That’s really not for me to answer.” Deady replied, “But it’s your rules.”

At that point, those in the Chamber broke out into laughter. “My role as a citizen volunteer is to provide a service and to help on behalf of the public interest,” stated Derdowski. “That’s my role and that’s really my only roll.”