January 13, 2013 12:22 by
RyanAt a couple of recent meetings, the City Council has plodded through a set of summary procedural rules that we’ve spent a great deal of money having our city attorney draft. This has been a pointless exercise for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we’re not learning anything about the very point of parliamentary procedure (to enabl...
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September 20, 2012 22:54 by
RyanAlso published in the Anacortes American on September 12, 2012: A recent letter to the editor (“Public records ‘witch hunt’ cost city a bundle,” September 5) claims that requests for public records are excessively burdening the City of Anacortes and argues the Legislature should amend the Public Records Act so that requestors can be billed for res...
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September 6, 2012 22:30 by
RyanSeveral proponents of the Tethys UGA expansion application have tried to use the County’s Envision Skagit 2060project (an EPA-funded study to project growth in Skagit County through the year 2060) to justify the addition of industrial land to the City of Anacortes for the Tethys water plant. The Envision Skagit Citizen Committee issued an 85-page...
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August 21, 2012 23:58 by
RyanOn Tuesday, September 4, the City Council will discuss the proposed resolution to ratify the mayor’s unauthorized application to the County to expand the Anacortes Urban Growth Area on behalf of Tethys Enterprises (ostensibly for a bottled water plant). A number of commenters at last night’s meeting had concerns about Tethys’s pla...
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July 19, 2012 01:55 by
RyanA couple of recent letters to the editor in the Anacortes American have highlighted a tense exchange between the mayor and myself at the June 4 Council meeting. The upshot of the dispute was that the three-member Council Planning Committee wanted to add a discussion item to the next Council study session agenda. Under the Council's adopted rul...
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June 26, 2012 22:38 by
RyanThe Anacortes City Council is (finally) poised to debate the Planning Department's proposal to adopt a Hearing Examiner, which the City has been slowly working through since 2010. Although we've had several meetings about the proposal, we have yet to actually debate the central issue: do we replace the citizen Planning Commission with an ...
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March 10, 2012 13:43 by
RyanAlthough the Mayor rarely provides the City Council much notice of upcoming agenda items, last week was especially egregious when we received the City’s 200-page Water System Plan just four days before the vote. Although other councilmembers have complained about the lack of time we have to review agenda items, the Mayor has brushed off those...
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March 8, 2012 00:30 by
RyanOn Monday, the Anacortes City Council approved an update to the city's Water System Plan, the document that charts the course for the City's largest utility. I voted against it. Here's why.
We didn't have time to read the document. Although the document is 200 pages long, the Mayor didn't provide the City Council notice that it would be comin...
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January 25, 2012 00:41 by
RyanThe City Council’s consideration of a switch to a Hearing Examiner system for review and approval of land use applications is moving forward. Here is the process the Planning Director proposed at Monday night’s City Council study session. The City Council did not adopt any process, so what follows is only one possible (but also probable) general ap...
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January 8, 2012 23:47 by
RyanPhoto by Elaine Walker. The City’s celebration of the Depot, including a presentation to Maria Petrish, the driving force behind its restoration, was quite well-attended Friday night (although we’d have loved to have seen more young people!). The Depot, operated by the Arts Foundation for years, recently switched to the City’s control. The mayor i...
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