Jane Montgomery, revisited

I’ve just read a document on the recall web site that deserves discussion and so I'm adding a second blog today.

Shortly before Jane Montgomery was interviewed by the Pacific City Council for the city clerk position, I presented some ideas to the council on the sorts of questions to ask a person they were considering for confirmation. One of the questions I said they should ask is, "what will you do if your boss tells you to do something unethical or illegal?" The person posing the question to Ms. Montgomery during her interview was Councilman James McMahon. I was stunned that the council would so thoroughly vet a candidate and flattered that they actually posed one of my questions. (As I recall, Mayor Hildreth objected to questions of this nature.) Ms. Montgomery was caught off guard and stumbled through the answer. It seemed clear she hadn’t anticipated a question like that.  Afterward, when I tipped off Mr. McMahon about an employee who had shared with me his belief he was being poorly treated, not properly served by the union, and instructed by the mayor not to discuss this, Mr. McMahon responded with something not quite so flattering this time. He told me, this was none of my business, that I just didn’t like Mayor Hildreth, and if I didn’t like him, I knew what I could do about it. Not a nice thing to say, and not a smart thing to put into an e-mail.

 But maybe Mr. McMahon deserves a degree of forgiveness, because he did pose my question, and Jane Montgomery has  apparently responded with courage and professionalism to just the sort of situation discussed in that interview. You should read her letter to the city council regarding Mayor Cy Sun’s conduct. It is a really good peek at what can go on behind the scenes in government offices and precisely why whistleblowers deserve protection. Please read it for yourself.

Although I’ve never had to duck bullets, I know a little bit about courage, and here it is: Courage is not the same as boldness. When we talk about people being “bold,” the implication is that they’re not worried  by the adversity. Not so, with courage.The measure of courage is fear, and Jane Montgomery had reason to be afraid, because you never truly know who your friends are, until they are tested. This was her trial by fire.

Jane Montgomery had the courage to do what too many people over the past 10 years have been unwilling to do – stand up to unethical  or illegal activity and perservere. At times I have deeply regretted that I didn’t have that sort of courage when Mayor Rich Hildreth pressured the council not to review his appointee and the council rolled over and gave in, leaving me hanging out a mile, and feeling betrayed. And although I’ve had some words about Mr. McMahon’s inappropriate rebuke, it’s only fair to also thank him for asking that question during Jane Montgomery’s interview, because it meant she knew what was expected of her when the true test came, and it also clarified the council's obligation  to support her when the chips were down.

Terror Management Theory

Once upon a time there was a social scientist named Ernest Becker, who developed a theory regarding why people fight each other. He said it occurs because we all realize we’re going to die eventually, and we’re none too happy about that. So we do whatever we can to prolong our lives, denying the inevitability of death, and this effort becomes the basis of human aggression. Well, whatever. His book on the subject (Denial of Death) garnered a Pulitzer Prize, so someone was impressed with his ideas.  
 

Anyway, part of the outcome of his thesis, as I understand it, is Terror Management Theory, which seems to say that, if you can scare the hell out of people, you can control them.  (Think of Vice President Dick Cheney warning us about the next terrorist attack or Senator Joseph McCarthy, and J. Edgar Hoover, warning us to watch out for the commies under the bed.) Enter stage left, Chicken Little, who runs around screaming that the sky is falling in. (“Watch out for that cloud!”)

There’s a little bit of TMT going on in Pacific. 

The latest chant is “We have to recall Cy Sun to save the city!”

Well, maybe. But this raises three questions: 

1. How will his recall meet the demands of the city’s insurer in time to keep the city insured?
2.  Is the city worth saving?
3. What would it be like without the City of Pacific? It might not be as bad as some people would be led to believe.

Instead of getting everyone panicking and scrambling to remove Cy Sun, maybe they should spend some of their energy doing two things:

 

1. Totally ignoring the mayor
2.  Developing an end game to prepare for a smooth death.

There was a question in the 60’s during the Vietnam War that seemed kind of goofy at the time. It went like this: What would happen if there was a war and nobody came? I mean, if we didn’t send our boys to bomb and kill and be killed, those Vietnamese would be right on our doorsteps, right?  Sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it? That was a war we didn’t need to fight. We got snookered into it, and now some Americans take tours in the land of our “conquerors.” 

So, what would Cy Sun be doing if no-one was trying to lynch him? What would motivate him if he wasn’t kept busy by all his enemies? This is really a serious question: How would he spend his time?

I don’t live in Pacific any more. I have very little skin in the game. But I’ve watched Pacific for more than 30 years, and I’ve tracked pieces of the city’s history a lot farther back.  Lots in the city originally were sold by a swindler. I understand it was a bootleg area during Prohibition. In the 1950s, as I’ve said below, there was a scandal about misuse of public property and it changed a lot of city council faces. In the 1970s the police chief first assaulted a school teacher and then, some months afterward, he assaulted a couple men waiting for an aid car. That second assault led to the possibility that the city could go out of business as a result of the million dollar claim that resulted. This possibility was publicly stated by City Councilman John Petersen, who lived along Ellingson Road right where teenagers are now asking if you want fries with that burger.

 Pacific doesn’t seem to be able to shake its bad vibes, and the effect is that good people stay out of government,  and drunks, fools, the mentally ill, self-serving cynics and their ilk have been preventing intelligent deliberation for the last 12 years. 

Who needs that?

The fear that the city may go out of existence has become a notion that’s starting to be talked about a little more rationally. The recall site carries comments on this subject  by City Councilman Josh Putnam, who barely hung on to his seat in the last election, when challenged by an individual who showed no clear qualifications for the position. If that wasn’t a wake-up call, it should have been.

Why not form a citizens committee and begin discussions with Auburn about taking possession of the city park, the community center, the public safety building, and the city hall functions?  Auburn might actually want  this windfall. There are people still on the payroll who could aid in the transition and probably gain better employment, if the negotiations went well. Auburn would probably need to hire some quality rank and file police officers to serve the area, and we have a few to provide. One of them is clearly first cabin. I think, if he had been police chief, we wouldn't be in this mess. (I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I know a good man when I meet one.)

Cy Sun isn’t the only person who can speak with Auburn. And maybe if a sound plan emerged, the city council could find a way to buy time for an orderly disincorporation. I suspect the insurance company would benefit by facilitating a soft landing.

This committee to recall Cy Sun implies it is spending its effort to keep the city intact, which is the same as saying we want more of the behavior that has cropped up in Pacific throughout its life and especially during the past 10 years, and which led to Mr. Sun’s election. Meanwhile, the recall committee hasn’t shown any evidence that a bucolic little community of people who like each other and have fun together ever  existed.  We imagine it exists. And there seem to be memories that such a Pacific existed at one time, but it hasn’t been my experience for at least a dozen years, with a few notable exceptions. This recall fight won’t be the factor in restoring any sense of community. Anybody who believes that is delusional.

There have been claims that costs would go up and services go down if the city ceases to exist as a result of loss of insurance, but so far all these are just claims. They rest on the assumption that Auburn couldn’t possibly be as efficient as Pacific in providing these services. 

Yeah, right.  Pacific is the shining example of efficiency. I just took a drive through a cul-de-sac  that is connected with Tacoma Boulevard. Some houses in that cul-de-sac have been occupied for a year, but the street work still isn’t finished. Pipes and manholes jut up waiting for an unsuspecting tire to run over them. Is that an example of good governance? (See photo, below).

Manhole cover juts above unfinished street

Although there are some very good staff working for the city – and this really is true, in my opinion—you  can’t believe a city has been well run if the chief executive officer is misusing a credit card, the council can’t stop him, and the police botch an inquiry into his conduct. A well run city would have sought to prevent that second flood a few years back.

In nuclear war, military doctrine is to leave the enemy’s command structure intact, because you want to have someone on the other side who can recognize when the war is over and it’s time to stop fighting. That’s what we call the “end game,”  or, perhaps, Plan B.

Assume the worst: Pacific will cease to exist by Jan 1, 2013, and perhaps much sooner. The community needs to start preparing right now for that possibility, because there’s a really good chance it’s going to happen. If it does, landlords, homeowners, business operators and renters in the geographical area known as Pacific should have a Plan B in place and the people to carry it out.

My recommendation: Presume the death of the city. Develop a body of residents with “the right stuff” to form a prototype Pacific Community Council that can be in place when it’s time for this area to be annexed to Auburn. Don’t include in this new organization anyone who shares in the responsibility for the death of Pacific. And don’t invest any more energy in fighting Cy Sun.

 I’m dead serious. The time to start is now. Do it, or it will be done for you.

Why Cy Sun was elected

This is just my opinion, but it’s based on my success at being resoundingly elected in 2001 and 2003. (By the way, I’m not running for office; I don’t live in Pacific any more.) In 2001 I defeated a recently-appointed incumbent with what I recall as a 65 percent plurality. I campaigned with newsletters and hand-made campaign signs, some of which were abstract or had hand-scrawled messages. Two years later I was re-elected with about 62 percent of the vote without using any signs at all.

First principal: If you can fog a mirror, you can probably garner at least 20 percent of the vote. Two candidates would account for at least 40 percent of the vote. You are therefore fighting for the middle 60 percent. If you are good at arithmetic, you realize that my 65 percent plurality meant I captured 75 percent of the votes that were up for grabs. I was stunned. What I learned leads to the second principal.

Second principal:  Voters are not stupid or lazy. More likely, they are tired of the same old slogans. Signs don’t normally persuade. They just tell voters the election is coming. Standard canned literature and slogans probably are not very effectively either. I think these tire and insult the voters. I sent a personal statement of my aspirations and vision to voters, engaging their intelligence. I think they liked that.

I think by being on the ballot (Note: See closing comment below.), Cy Sun already claimed a chunk of the middle ground. And he added to that a message that engaged the voters. Pacific residents were well aware of the scandals and controversy surrounding the city’s public safety director and were aware that this had been going on for some time. A reasonable question was, why wasn’t this fixed? Cy Sun had an answer that resonated: corruption. It just made sense. Why else would the scandals go unpunished?

For years the public had listened to Mr. Hildreth extol his virtues, while many noticed that he tended to eclipse anyone else who had something to say. He’s not famous for giving credit to anybody. And then, when Cy Sun distributed campaign literature criticizing the city, Mr. Hildreth showed his true colors by sending  the police to Mr. Sun’s home. 

When police officers followed an attorney’s instructions to prevent Mr. Sun from destroying public records, I don’t think that’s Gestapo tactics. The demeanor of the young men involved seemed to be highly respectful, and it looked like they wanted to be anywhere else but where they were. But when police were sent to intimidate Mr. Sun over his pointed election literature, they were way beyond any reasonable use of police power, and the Gestapo label fit like a glove. Richard Hildreth was out of line and the police command staff should have referred the mayor to the city attorney.

Regarding Mr. Jones, he appears to have cultivated an appearance of quiet responsibility, offering only a change of faces, but no changes in policy. His failure to reign in Mr. Hildreth’s misuse of a city credit card reinforced that sense of no change, particularly when police review was twisted to imply that Mr. Hildreth had been exonerated. It doesn’t matter that Mr. Hildreth's fans bought that notion of exoneration; what matters is that the middle ground was shifting toward "anybody but Rich."

 When the city council converted the public safety director’s position to civil service, it had the appearance of protecting an overpaid controversial public figure, and Mr. Jones could have raised the issue that the civil service commission was not properly informed of the conversion. If he did make an issue of it, it was so low key as to be forgotten. While Mr. Hildreth’s message was all about himself, Mr. Jone’s message seemed to be that he didn’t have a message, and wasn’t trying very hard.

Cy Sun wanted the job, and his message wasn’t about himself. It was about the issues that had people scratching their heads. He had an  answer that explained what was happening. While it’s unfortunate that he’s not the man for the job, this has been an object lesson on the arithmetic of elections and why public officials have to keep in mind one simple rule: You snooze, you lose. 

(Closing note: Yikes! After publishing the above, I just remembered: Cy Sun never made it onto the ballot. He was a write-in! He didn't start with 20 percent of the votes. He started with zero. How embarrassing. It's embarrassing for me that I said it wrong, and especially embarrassing for two people with name recognition and the power of office to be whipped by a newcomer whose only apparent skill was gumption and whose main resource was voter resentment.)

Stand and deliver

Imagine, if you will, that Pacific Mayor Cy Sun decided to prevent today's scheduled march to call for his recall. Imagine that He called in support from several small jurisdictions affiliated with Pacific, and their police officers arrived and formed a staging area in the parking lot of the retirement home on Third Avenue, opposite the police station, frightening the elderly. Imagine that he only backed down when the American Civil Liberties Union advised the city's attorney that he was violating federal criminal law. Later, the protesters are allowed to speak to the city council, but first they must run a gamut of metal detectors and police officers before they can enter the council chambers — as if that's going to protect someone from harming a city official somewhere else in the tiny city of Pacific. Imagine that the city's legislative branch allows the executive to dictate how the public may approach the council.

Nuts, isn't it?

But that's almost precisely what happened a few years back when the Latino community, tired of the racial profiling by the Pacific Police Department, tried to stage a march to protest the abuse.

Pastor Mark Gause of New Hope Lutheran Church tried to facilitate an orderly event by first asking for a marching permit from city hall. No such permit was needed, he was told. Then, approaching the weekend before the march, it turns out that a permit was indeed needed, and the person issuing the permit was none other than Public Safety Director John Calkins (who was assuming the role of police chief, which he wasn't), and that Mr. Calkins conveniently was taking time off and could not be reached until late in the day of the scheduled march. However, according to Pastor Gause, after Lieutenant Massey delivered the message that the marchers would be arrested, the unavailable Mr. Calkins telephoned Pastor Gause to make sure he  "got the message." Mr. Calkins called in the calvary  from other cities and the forces to arrest began marshalling.  Destroying any opportunity to pretend the threat never took place, Mayor Richard Hildreth brilliantly sent out a press release saying the march wouldn't be allowed, thereby thoroughly throwing his arms around his own tar baby.

And then the ACLU contacted the city's attorney and Mr. Calkins and Mr. Hildreth did one of the swiftest and smoothest moon walks on record, backing up and shutting up at light speed. But a few months later, when another march was planned for the Latinos to complain about the city's expropriation of THEIR celebration of Cinco de Mayo (it relates to a great battle in Mexico), the threats again emerged. And this time there was a counter demonstration — a group gathered in city park with American Flags waving, apparently to demonstrate America's right to expropriate a Mexican celebration. Lieutenant Massey crashed the party, uninvited, on private land with his citation book, and began asking for the name of the person in charge. When that didn't work and the Latinos decided to cross the street to explain to the counter demonstrators why they were upset, Mr. Massey got on his cell phone, and the flag wavers abruptly drove off, making any dialog impossible. I was there. I saw this.

Even if he could, Cy Sun isn't going to prevent his opponents from marching. Aside from the fact that he doesn't have the resources to arrest or intimidate anyone, he doesn't need to. Unless he can be removed by being charged with a crime, there doesn't seem to be any way of getting him out of the catbird seat in time to keep the insurance carriers from cancelling the city's coverage. Cancelling the coverage is the same as stepping on the oxygen tube of an intensive care patient. March and shout all you want to, but the longer this goes on, the more it's going to cost the insurers. Already the former city clerk has reportedly filed a $2.2 million claim against the city. As I've said somewhat privately, if I were Canfield and Associates, I would have cut the city off yesterday.

The last time the city lost its insurance, according to the recall Web site, claims against the insurer had been 120 percent of premiums. (This seems to be the figure posted in the recall blog page. Sorry, it's hard to read.) I think this time the bite is going to be a lot bigger.

And since we're on that subject, the person who lost that insurance was none other than Howard Erickson, the city's former mayor and the individual who was almost front-and-center in the confrontation between Mayor Sun and the Pacific Police who were sent to protect public documents. Protecting public documents has never been a big concern of Mr. Erickson. In 2001, before Proposition 1 was put on the ballot to change Pacific to a Council-Manager form of government, Mr. Erickson kept "losing" the authorizing documents until Karen McIver, council president, took them to King County and filed them herself. When the election was finally held, King County took over the city's voting booths, an obvious move to prevent further interference with the election.

It should be noted that Mr. Calkins would never have been around to attempt to suppress a civil rights march if Mr. Erickson hadn't appointed him after he became mayor in 2000.

Mr. Erickson and his past political associate, Ken Scroggins, have willingly placed themselves before television cameras and become part of a notorious side show that had folks well beyond the Puget Sound area paying attention. By so doing  they have willingly generated great curiosity over who they are and what role they have played. No one held a gun to their heads and forced them into the city hall publicity stunt. They have sacrificed any claim to privacy they could have hoped for. And as public figures, they deserve the closest of scrutiny. They need to answer for what their role has been in this latest Mad Hatter Tea Party, and if they are the ones who have persuaded Mr. Sun to engage in his insane behavior, they need to be held to account by their neighbors, their friends, and the entire community for the anarchy that has resulted.

Howard Erickson, Ken Scroggins: Stand and deliver.

On Becoming Stars

Remember this from the rock opera, Hair?

Good morning, Starshine, 

The earth says 'hello!' 

You twinkle above us,
We twinkle below...

While the political creatures in Pacific fight for the life of the city, there's a role for the people to play -- and that role is more critical than the role any single politician and activist might perform.

It has to do with becoming a star. At least one of our civic leaders was obsessed with stardom.

So what exactly is a star? It's a massive collection of hydrogen, so big and heavy that internal pressure crushes the hydrogen atoms together until fusion occurs and the star begins to shine. It continues to fuse hydrogen to make heavier and heavier elements. From hydrogen it creates oxygen and carbon, sulfur and aluminum, iron, and ultimately, even uranium, an element so big it cannot sustain itself and decays. the brightest stars are so enormous that they bend the space around them and bend the light that is moving through that space.

Then they blow up. And they seed the universe with the heavier elements that they cooked, and it is from those elements that life arises. 

You and I are stardust. And like the stars that made us possible, we also bend the space through which we move. Our words and deeds encourage and discourage, and the ripples of those actions flow out from us and influence others. We create reality, sometimes on a grand scale and sometimes in little ways. But it all counts. And when the City of Pacific no longer exists, what we do will still matter.

There have been those in the city who wanted to be stars, and thought that eclipsing others would make their light  seem all the brighter. But here's the real truth: A galaxy with only one star is a very dim galaxy indeed. The brightest galaxies are those with the greatest abundance of stars, and those who make the greatest difference are those who help their fellow stars to shine. It's not about you, it's about us– and others. And there is no action so small that it doesn't count.

Here's a poem I saw when I was a child that I have never forgotten. Quite likely many readers have seen it before.  It helps to have a Sunday School upbringing to grasp some of the meaning, but it really transcends religion. The message applies to all time and to all people, and it makes the point that you can never predict the impact of a kind act or a positive contribution. What you do in this community counts.  Here it is:

I asked the Lord, “What shall I do?”
And my love flowed warm and free.
Then He pointed me out a tiny spot
And said, “Tend that for me.”

I quickly replied, “Oh no, not that.
“Why, no one would ever see.
“No matter how well my work was done;
“Not that little place for me.”

The word He spoke, It was not stern,
He answered me tenderly;
“Ah, little one, search that heart of thine.
“Are you working for them or me?
“Nazareth was a little place, and so was Galilee.”

While the fight continues, there's lots of little things to be done.  And everyone can add to the light.

Phoenix Rising

It is time for the people who live within the boundaries of the corporate entity called "Pacific" to rediscover themselves, to share their aspirations and to shake off the poison that a handful of individuals have spread within this city. The city may die—it probably will die—but the people, like the mythical Phoenix, can rise from its ashes, if only they have a place to stand. Here's a vision I shared with the city council 12 years ago shortly before the madness went into high gear. Each one of you probably has a vision of equal value. If you wish to share it, this blog is at your disposal. Please—since we are creatures who follow our gaze—share your vision of how you would like this tiny portion of the world to be.
Sincerely,
Robert Smith

An Appeal to the City Council

On January 24, 2000, a representative of Pacific Candlelighters shared the vision of this group with the Pacific City Council. Here are the comments that were read into the record.

 
 Mr. Mayor, Members of the City Council

My name is Robert Smith, I live at 101 Milwaukee Boulevard South, and I am a representative of a community group, the Pacific Candlelighters. We work on projects to improve our community. Among one of them was the holiday lighting program which recognized local residents for their lighting displays during the Christmas season. We have the same objectives you have: to make Pacific a better place to live. The difference is that as city officials, you do what you have to do; as Candlelighters, we do what we want to do. So we have more fun than you do. 

I am here today to ask for your support of our group, but first I would like to give you a clear vision of some of the things we dream about. And I think the best way to share this is to tell you about an event that occurred involving a newcomer to our community on a spring afternoon in the year 2010. 

The individual was driving home after a long, tiring day of work. As she pulled off the freeway she caught the smell of the cedar grove and wildflowers that Pacific citizens had planted along the offramp as part of their city beautification program. The off-ramp had become a wonderful welcome mat to people arriving in the city, and among the flowers was the familiar sign, with that familiar, corny, slogan: 

Welcome to Pacific, The City to Come Home To.

 

Toward the end of the 20th Century, city council members decided they wanted Pacific to become a destination city. But the more they thought about it, the more they realized it already was a destination city —for nearly 6,000 people who came back here every night to be with their families and neighbors. And that's when they started seriously considering the new slogan. 

This woman turned left, and drove east to the Alpac School. She turned toward City Hall, passing the 20-acre wetland park, that forestry students from a local community college had helped organize. At Third Street, she turned left and noticed a group of people posting handbills on the kiosk by the bus stop. The town didn't have a newspaper, but the kiosk carried news about lost pets, cars for sale, recitals, and anything that people wanted to tell their neighbors about. Yes, some scraps of paper hit the ground occasionally. But taking five minutes to clean it up once a day was worth the cost of tying the community together.

The woman headed for the park. It was Wednesday, and the karaoke singers were already warming up on the stage. Occasionally a band would jam there, and sometimes a young woman with a voice like Joan Baez would stop by with her guitar. Pacific had become known as the place that encouraged music in its park by the river. 

When the woman arrived at the park, she noted the flier on the kiosk announcing the 10th annual Pacific City-Wide Yard Sale. This event had grown until more than 100 Pacific families showed up each year to set up a booth and sell the trash and treasures that people in the past had sold at their driveways. The entry fee was discounted if you donated to the food bank; you got your all money back if you cleaned up your area entirely. People came from as far as Tacoma and Issaquah to haggle. The yard sale had become notorious as a place where you could get a good deal, have a great time, make friends, and go away feeling good. 

As our lady thought about having her own yard sale booth, she walked through the "People's Arboretum." that landscaped the river bank. The plants there were tagged with the names of the individuals who had donated them from their own yards. The arboretum wasn't the greatest one in the world, but it was a demonstration of people who had poured their hearts into a project they were proud of. 

There were kids running back and forth over the river on the footbridge that had been built by donations, matching funds and grants and a lot of community involvement. Everyone loved this bridge. It had become a symbol for the city. And this bridge had a name: The New Hope Footbridge. Officially, this was a geographic place name to honor the individual from a nearby church who suggested the project. But no-one was fooled by that explanation. Everyone knew that this bridge represented a new hope in the City of Pacific that we would devote our time to building bridges instead of walls. 

She drove home and turned on her TV to the government channel. She had no intention of watching static images listing the vacancies on the boards and commissions in Pacific. There weren't any vacancies. Through community projects such as these, leaders emerged and were invited to participate in city government; yes, they came for the fun, but some of them stayed for the work. 

No, what this woman wanted to watch was Pacific City News, the television program put on by local teenagers and advised by a retired college instructor. The kids were having the time of their lives running their own TV show, and people in Pacific were learning more about their town than any commercial media had ever told them. 

But tonight, something strange was happening. There was a videotape of a mother who was doubled over, holding her stomach and weeping. This was a surprise. Our viewer recognized the woman; she had been involved in the holiday lighting program for several years now -- the one that had grown so much over time that Pacific became known as the "City of Light" to people driving by on the freeway. 

So she recognized this woman, and she wanted to know what was happening to her to make her cry? As the camera panned back, she found out. 

She was at a T-ball game with little tykes so small that their headgear practically fell over their eyes. The kids would swing until they hit the ball, and then they would look around to ask which way to run. None of the kids could catch or throw, so they would pick up the ball and chase each other around the bases; if you caught him, he was out. If he outran you, he was home free. There wasn't a parent on camera who wasn't laughing at the sight. Someone videotaped the event and shared it with the teenage newscasters. 

And it was at this point that our lady thought about that sign at the freeway entrance: Pacific, the City To Come Home To. The message didn't seem so corny any more. She liked these people. She wanted to be part of this community. This was turning out to be a really good place to live. 

Mr. Mayor, Members of the City Council: 

We are Pacific Candlelighters. We have some dreams we would like to realize. Many of those dreams are going to require your involvement and support. And we have a request. When a Candlelighter comes to you with an idea, we ask that you encourage that individual, so we can work together to make Pacific "The City to Come Home To." 

 Friends, if you have a vision for what the community of Pacific can be like when the civil war is over, I encourage you to share it now.


Robert

Phoenix Burning

...two armies that fight each other is like one large army that commits suicide...

(French soldier Henri Barbusse in his novel "Le Feu", 1915)

I’m pretty well convinced that nothing is going to save the City of Pacific. While I was out of town there was what appeared to be a staged media event in which Pacific police were compelled, due to the city attorney’s instructions, to arrest the mayor for trying to obtain access to records that were being protected so that he wouldn’t continue to destroy them. In the videos were several rabble rousers, including Howard Erickson, Pacific’s former mayor, who was booted out of office eight years ago for his belligerent incompetency, including losing the city’s insurance. With the city’s insurance virtually forfeit for the second time, it appears that Mr. Erickson may be poised to deliver the death blow. This latest soap opera just puts a tidy ribbon atop the city’s coffin.

In the background to this side show is a reported request by Pacific Councilwoman Leanne Guier for an investigation into "violation of  police practices and procedures involving treatment of in-custody individuals." 

Meanwhile, there are reports that a member of the police department appears to be involved in the campaign to recall the very mayor his fellow policemen were arresting. It’s not clear how many other people are playing both sides of the fence. I suspect the insurance carrier is wondering what sorts of things which have been swept under the rug are just waiting to be discovered.

The announcement of the city’s insurance carrier that it will cancel coverage at the end of the year comes a little late. More than two years ago, I told the carrier’s broker that the mayor and public safety director had violated federal law by trying to suppress a civil rights march. And in 2010, at the time the Klickitat County Sheriff’s Office was filing a report stating that they believed Pacific’s public safety director had abused his authority, their attorney was taking depositions that should have curled their hair and kept members of the city council’s Public Safety Committee awake at night. Did Mayor Richard Hildreth really not know? Did he really not tell public safety committee members Gary Hulsey and Clint Steiger?

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing—and, in Pacific, that’s what they did, following the removal of Mr. Erickson eight years ago. The city was on the cusp of developing a healthy body politic, but a charlatan tested the waters with a power grab that told him the council would allow him more power than he was entitled to, and from then on no-one was willing to speak up about abuse of power.

The chickens came home to roost last November, when Cy Sun was elected and descended on the city like the Biblical plague of locusts that tormented Pharoah’s Egypt. Pharoah had it coming, but not necessarily his subjects. In Pacific, a lot of innocent bystanders are now paying the price of the negligence of the people they elected. This sad buffoon has once again betrayed the voters, just as Richard Hildreth did eight years ago and Howard Erickson before him. It never ends.

For myself, I want to start by making amends.

I owe Pacific Partnerships an apology. Yeah, that’s what I said. When did anyone in any position of advantage in Pacific ever apologize to anyone? I’m going to show you how it’s done. An ideal apology has four parts: 

1. You state what you did. 
2. You state what was wrong with what you did. 
3. You state how you feel about it. 
4. And you ask for forgiveness.

Here’s what I did: I said Mayor Cy Sun wasn’t invited to Pacific Days; I was told that, and I believed it. Several people have told me he was indeed invited, and he was invited in such a way that it would be really hard for him to honestly claim he wasn’t. I believe those people.

Here’s what was wrong with what I did: I have had the kind of experiences with Mr. Sun over the past two years that should convince any intelligent person he is about as credible as his predecessor. Like his predecessor, he is less concerned about what is true than he is about winning. I should have fact checked. I knew better. In a moment of weakness I was careless.

Here’s how I feel about what I did: I’m embarrassed and ashamed. I was reckless, and I’m sincerely sorry about it, because I undoubtedly hurt the feelings of some people who are doing good things for the community and deserve positive recognition for their efforts instead of implying they were inconsiderate. That was just wrong.

And here’s my request for forgiveness: I hope that those of you who were shortchanged by my report will honor me by keeping our lines of communication open and giving me and others a chance to help you make this a better community in whatever way I can contribute. God knows you need all the encouragement you can receive. You are swimming against the current.

There. See how easy that was? I did it, and it didn’t hurt a bit. And I meant it. It was sincere.

I hope it serves as an example, because it’s time for a number of other people to apologize as well, including a whole bunch of individuals who were public officials with me and after me and who let the community down by not putting a stop to unethical and tasteless behavior which laid the ground work for what’s going on today. They could have stopped it, and they didn’t.

For a majority of the three-plus decades I lived in Pacific, alcoholics and sometimes disturbed individuals manipulated by those alcoholics have poisoned the politics of the city. Attempts to interdict that behavior have been thwarted by the alcoholics, the disturbed individuals, and the people who tolerated the behavior.

Eight years ago the voters chose to chart a new course and the elected officials flubbed it. Since then the city was told many times of misbehavior;  if there had been an acknowledgement of the transgressions and appropriate apologies made, I don’t think the city would be in the crisis that it now faces. Cy Sun was elected due to the personal failure of many public officials for many years.

Stop the madness! It’s probably too late to save the city. But it isn't too late to begin preparing to rise from the ashes and build a new sense of community. The Romans didn’t necessarily leave Italy just because Rome got sacked. The same will be true of Pacific. Like the mythical Phoenix that was consumed by fire and rose from its own ashes, the community of Pacific may rise from the ashes of the city.