Vancouver resident Shauna Walters calls the County Council’s recenter actions ‘egregious’ but ‘not surprising’
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and do not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com
I wish I could say the recent decision of the Clark County Council to remove Michelle Bourret-Belkot from the C-TRAN Board of Directors was surprising. Egregious, yes, surprising, no. You see, I saw this same scenario play out time and time again while serving on the Battle Ground City Council.
Some councilors voted a certain way on issues because they were worried about the loss of support from a legislator (federal or state), another larger jurisdiction (City of Vancouver or Clark County), or a developer for another initiative. Instead of basing decisions on feedback from their constituents, they must first check with their overlords in the federal, state and local governments. Each issue is held for ransom and dependent upon whether the cash-producing spicket will freely flow or be abruptly cut off. The councilors who would not play that game are treated as lepers and shunned, removed from, or not even appointed to, board positions and committees that might challenge the status quo of the bureaucracy.
It is often argued that we elected our representatives to know what’s best so that we don’t have to worry about the day-to-day operations and that their decisions are a mirror image of what the majority of the electorate wants. If that were true, how many of you knew the position that your elected representatives would take on an issue that Clark County has collectively said they did not want for 20 years now prior to voting? I can tell you that only one Clark County Councilor campaigned on their position of no light rail out of the five. We cannot know how our representatives will vote on every issue and that is why it is important to engage with them to let them know so that they can properly represent us. This continuous communication loop seems to have broken though when you have listened to 2.5 hours of public comment telling you that you made a poor decision by removing Councilor Belkot from the C-TRAN Board of Directors and then turn around the next day and double down on your unpopular decision by formally beginning conversations about solidifying a rule change to force the vote of a member of a board to conform to the wishes of the other four on the council. The fact that there needed to be a rule change to begin with tells me that the Clark County Council were fully aware that they were operating outside the scope of their authority.
Maybe I have an unrealistic idea of what a representative democracy should be, but I don’t think so. I think that somewhere along the way, we lost what it meant for elected representatives to be accountable to their voters and that is because a good chunk of voters are not engaged enough in local government to know who the players are and how they behave on the dais and beyond. As we go into a heavy local elections cycle, I implore you to get to know the candidates before you mark your box to vote for them. Waiting for your handy pamphlet to come in the mail and make your decision is not going to be enough. Ask them what assurances they can give you that they will listen to you on issues that you find to be important. And finally, just because someone has been elected to that position over and over again it does not mean they are the best candidate to represent you.
Shauna Walters
Vancouver
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2.5 hours of comment, even at a very efficient 3 minutes per commenter, would net us a total of 50 people. That is one one-hundredth of one percent of the registered voters in Clark County.
As has been noted elsewhere, the most recent vote in Clark County that asked about light rail took place over a decade ago. Not only that, but the total population has grown by more people than voted on that advisory, at the time.
It is at least partially on that basis that I would gently caution Ms. Walters against the assumptions that are implicit in her comments here. There are, and yes, have been, a significant number of people living in this county who are in favor of the development of light rail. It is entirely possible that a majority of people living in the districts of the other four Councilors actually do support the adoption of light rail and that those Councilors are voting accordingly.
In a county where most of our contested elections are separated by a margin of victory of less than 10% we simply cannot keep pretending that the positions that disagree with ours only exist through ignorance or malfeasance. On the contrary, they are very likely beliefs and positions held by people that we see and know in our community, even people that we otherwise respect and value.
I echo the sentiment that we should all invest the time and energy to get to know our local candidates and understand the issues that most impact our community. But we simply cannot afford to move into those conversations with the attitude that half the population just, “doesn’t know what’s going on.”
Not only is that sort of dismissive approach fundamentally unrealistic, but it ultimately will not produce the sort of strong, thriving, and mutually-supporting community that I think we all want to see in Clark County.
I think you give many (not all) of the voting public far too much credit for knowing their representatives and being knowledgeable about the issues being voted upon. It IS my belief that “half the population just doesn’t know what’s going on” when they cast their ballot.
Ms. Walters statement of “just because someone has been elected to that position over and over again it does not mean they are the best candidate to represent you” couldn’t be more true. What’s the old saying… something about just get my name spelled right? Many voters DO vote by name-recognition.
I could write on and on about my thoughts of this IBR, which is the root cause of the pickle in which the Council finds itself. I’m just amazed that we are at this point, fighting with each other and going to court over something that still has yet to receive the all-important-approval from the USCG. I just hope to hell(0) that the USCG denies the low-clearance request, thereby killing the current IBR program. That day can’t come soon enough for me.
How about this? I think if you want to make the argument that half the population doesn’t know what’s going on, that population is going to be pretty equally distributed between the various “sides” of this issue.
I also think it largely depends on how you are defining the term, “doesn’t know.”
Most people can only afford to be passionate about a handful of issues at a time. That focus does not necessarily mean that they “don’t know” their general preferences in a given policy area or toward a particular candidate/representative. We could probably all stand to learn more, even in areas where we are comparatively expert. Knowledge is a range, not an on/off switch (would that it were…).
I’m sure we could have a lengthy debate about the relative merits of the IBR, but fundamentally I fully agree with you here: There’s no sense in living in a state of perpetual conflict with our friends and neighbors over something that might not even be possible in the first place. Who’s got USCG’s number? Can we get an update?