HomeMy WebLinkAbout012625 Commissioner Brotherton's Response to Shellie Yarnell's Public Comments on 21 Jan 2025ALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
Dear Commissioner Brotherton,
In my previous correspondences with you and the other commissioners, I have always tried my best to be respectful of the hard work and thanklessness that you all, as county commissioners,
must face and contend with on a daily basis. Please believe me when I say that your collective efforts are greatly appreciated, and not only by me, but by many others who are also aware
of your hard work and dedication to our community. When I present a position as being critical of a direction you are taking or a policy you are pursuing/ proposing, I have always tried
to not just be a complainer, but to present alternative solutions and suggestions for resolving the point at hand. This email, unfortunately, needs to take a different direction.
The tone of your response to Shellie Yarnell's public comment during the BOCC meeting held on 1/21/2025 was bullying, disrespectful, and borderline slanderous. It appeared to me that,
for whatever reason, you were triggered by her comments, resulting in your belligerent and personal attacking response. Your response was completely surprising and unexpected, and was
totally inappropriate. Your response also reflected an emotional reaction from someone who is obviously too interconnected and potentially too positionally biased towards the subject
matter, which is a major problem.
I was especially taken aback by your statement which implied that Shellie is "biased against the survey" and "biased against the pool" and that she believes "we should not build a public
pool", promoting your misconceived ideas that Shellie is somehow against the construction of a new community-based aquatic facility. This statement by you is false and a lie, and as
stated earlier, what I feel is, again, borderline slanderous. As members of a group who became urgently concerned over the complete misappropriation of resources and malfeasance in
an attempt to push a deeply flawed "Taj Mahal"-esque new aquatic center at the Mountain View Commons by an interagency/ intergovernmental collective, Shellie, myself, and others from
our group, the All County Citizens Alliance, the ACCA, drove home to you and other interagency/ intergovernmental leaders, that the newly proposed aquatic facility at Mountain View
Commons was obviously destined to fail as presented. The ACCA's efforts, again, with Shellie as a member, were critical in re-shaping the discussion regarding a new aquatic facility
concept towards a mid-county, more equitable, and more practical solution.
Not once did anyone from our group, including Shellie, ever project an agenda to not consider building a new pool facility for our community. Our concerns were based on the scope and
scale of the then proposed flawed project, and the desire to refocus the agenda towards building an aquatic facility that would be perceived as fiscally responsible and equitable, thus
potentially promoting a project that would be well received by the voters, not only in the city, but by voters countywide. Based on this, your triggered comments towards Shellie and
the coalition efforts that she in particular is trying to build in order to foster a concept for a fiscally responsible, practically designed, and community-based pool facility in the
mid-county are very disturbing and counterproductive towards her goal, as well as the goal of others who are trying to facilitate the building of a community pool when it is viable
to do so, and when appropriately in line with other community-based priorities.
Regardless of the reasoning behind your triggered response, the more disturbing element here is that your comments could be perceived as an attempt to stifle Shellie's free speech on
the matter. When you have a person like Shellie, who is civically minded and who spends countless hours with community-based civic engagement, especially in the south county, and when
you publically belittle and disparage her well informed comments, you are fostering an environment that could result in her and others lack of desire to be civically engaged. This is
deeply troubling.
When you contextualized the comments that Shellie made in her public comment and your response to the same, I personally believe that you are wrong in your assessment as to her response
to the draft survey. I would argue that your desired approach actually promotes a much greater potential for a biased outcome to the survey. Shellie's desire to have critical fiscal
points available as part of the survey would truly validate any worthy survey response. Not having transparent information regarding the fiscal impact, i.e. a potential range of construction
costs, operational costs, membership costs, more information regarding the overhead associated with the PFD as well as the PFDs overall authority, etc. etc. would be irresponsible in
the promotion of a viable and meaningful survey. The work already performed by the City of Port Townsend as associated with the Healthier Together Aquatic Facility concept at the Mountain
View Commons, as well as the work as performed by the Healthier Together Task Force, as well as the years of work as performed by the JAC has produced plenty of information to answer
the questions that are part of the new draft survey as currently presented. You, the other members of the BOCC, and the voters need and deserve a survey that gets into the "nuts and
bolts" elements, not the "warm and fuzzy" elements associated with potentially building a new mid-county aquatic facility. Anything less will just be more politically-based survey eyewash
resulting in nothing relatable and substantive for anyone concerned, especially the voters.
Finally, based on your attitude and response towards Shellie, I believe that you owe her a public apology. One of the true characteristics of a good leader is knowing when to admit they
were wrong. Again, given your response to Shellie's public comment, you are/ were wrong and this needs to be publically clarified and corrected, ideally at the BOCC meeting on 1/27/2025.
Please do not take my comments here personally, as my goal in writing this email is to try to help you to restore your credibility on this matter, using this as a teachable moment for
our entire community to benefit from. It is ok to make a mistake, as nobody is perfect, but how you respond in correcting the mistake is what really counts towards your perceived leadership
going forward.
Sincerely,
Mark L Grant
Jefferson County
ve Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=54ef434f9d844e7eb26e610258124255-44e21fdc-19塅⼺㵏塅䡃乁䕇䅌卂伯㵕塅䡃乁䕇䄠䵄义卉剔呁噉⁅則問⁐䘨䑙䉉䡏㉆匳䑐呌⼩乃刽䍅偉䕉呎⽓乃㔽䔴㑆㐳㥆㡄㐴㝅䉅㘲㙅〱㔲ㄸ㐲㔲ⴵ㐴㉅䘱䍄ㄭ9