Town council discussions and decisions

While everyone everywhere endorses the concept of truth and reconciliation, the little Town of La Conner is fast becoming a tale of two cities – or two towns – as a cadre of residents are increasingly engaged, enraged and feeling isolated from the council members representing them and charged with governing.

These residents want the council to stop a three-story condominium building from going up on Center Street behind The Slider Cafe.

They want council to honor a 1986 rezone agreement approved by the council that year.

Citizens want council members to respond at council meetings, voicing their positions on the issue.

Meanwhile, council speaks barely a word. At least one council member finds the Weekly News divisive. If council and staff are following procedures, codes and the letter of the law, can’t residents understand and appreciate the limitations they are under?

Residents cannot. Hired legal council analyzes the contact rezone and advise it was effective upon adoption. That is the phrase used. The property zoning converted from residential to commercial because of the 1986 council vote. The agreement was enacted. No one disputes that. The Town’s file of applications and planning commission resolution and meeting minutes detailing the history of the process is perfectly clear.

Then the law firm analyzes the words “so that,” as in “so that this agreement will become a matter of public record,” the paragraph near the end of the document and just above the signatures of all parties. The law firm finds, “arguably, this statement indicated the issuers intent.”

Yes. Everyone in 1986 intended the agreement to be filed. By mistake, it was not.

Why is any person in the town government – certainly the elected officials, but also staff – unable to say, “we were wrong in 1986 to not file this agreement. The Town made a mistake.”

When the hearing examiner remands issues back to the Town, residents want the council, not the staff, to respond. Residents are looking for accountability. They want leadership. They want their elected officials to be the final arbitrators and decision makers for critical decisions that determine both the design, scale and size of a building constructed in 2023 and the lived impact of additional people and cars living at that address will have on the community well into the future.

They want to know they are heard.

Council hears from residents but residents wonder if they are being listened to. Little has been said by any council member in the time they have been petitioned by residents.

Last evening resident Dan O’Donnell’s agenda item, an ordinance to have council approve “the rezone is hereby deemed valid and in effect” was in the council packet.

Council met after this edition went to press. Was a motion made and a second offered so the issue got debated? I don’t know, but I hope so. Council either accepted the challenge to take up and resolve this issue, going on the record with their positions and their reasons for them – and sharing their concerns around this project and acknowledging their constituents' apprehensions – or they did not. Either way, it is disappointing and frustrating to many that only by a resident’s request, for that is how the ordinance is labeled, has the validity of the 1986 agreement come before council.

Neither challenging the government to engage nor wanting to get beyond the intricacies of the municipal code is divisive, nor is asking for responses and dialogue from the town’s legislative body to its citizens.