SEQUIM — They will meet, but the Sequim City Council members won’t call this Friday’s get-together a meeting.
At least they’d better not, if they want to keep it legal.
The council members ¬ — long-timers Bill Huizinga, Walt Schubert and Paul McHugh, and relative newcomers Susan Lorenzen, Ken Hays, Erik Erichsen and Mayor Laura Dubois — are headed for a half-day “team building” at 1 p.m. Friday in the John Wayne Marina banquet room.
The event will include the seven elected officials plus Interim City Manager Linda Herzog and City Attorney Craig Ritchie — but the public and reporters will be barred.
Open meetings law
Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act, RCW 42.30, guarantees that “all meetings of the governing body of a public agency shall be open and public.”
Sure, there are scenarios when the law doesn’t apply, such as when the council discusses real estate transactions, possible lawsuits and “matters affecting national security.”
Those and a few other exceptions warrant an “executive session,” also known as a meeting from which the council can kick out the public and press.
But team building isn’t listed under the legal exceptions. And Friday’s gathering hasn’t been labeled an executive session.
The grounds for shutting spectators out on Friday, Ritchie said, are simple.
“It’s not a meeting,” he said. “It isn’t a meeting if there isn’t action. Discussing city business would be action.”
Ritchie emphasized that the council will not be talking about official business.
The team building will be a discussion of “how everybody can operate in the best interests of the city.”
This may sound like legal and linguistic slipslop, but in the face of a reporter’s questioning, Ritchie stood firm, citing the definitions section of the open meetings law.
“Meeting means meetings at which action is taken,” reads the final clause of RCW 42.30.020.
Ritchie vows that the council will take no action, at least by his definition, during the team building. Therefore “it’s not a meeting the open meetings act applies to.”
A call to state Attorney General Rob McKenna’s office affirmed Ritchie’s assertion.
“Even if there’s a majority of [council members] present, that would be true,” said Tim Ford, the attorney general’s open government ombudsman.
“If they all went to, say, a Mariners baseball game and didn’t discuss any official business,” he added, “so long as there is no action that relates to official business of the city, it’s not a meeting, and it wouldn’t fall under the Open Public Meetings Act.”
But the council members will have to watch what they say, Ford added. “They just have to be careful that when they engage in these team-building skills, there is absolutely no discussion of official business, because if there is even some minor discussion, it transforms into a public meeting — and because it’s a closed meeting, it’s automatically a violation.”
Council briefed
The council members have been briefed on this.
They know they must not debate city park planning, proposed subdivisions, fee hikes, Sequim’s budget and contracts with agencies such as the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula.
The group of seven has spent much of the past year arguing about those things.
No, this team building is an effort to get along better.
Schubert, a former mayor who’s been on the council for nearly eight years, has more than once called the newcomers “you four.”
Dubois, the mayor who succeeded Schubert in January 2008, has protested his use of that phrase.
And that’s just a nibble off the full plate of things that have fed long bickering sessions during the council’s Monday meetings.
But what would be the harm of having the public at the team building? Perhaps people could learn something about group dynamics and diplomacy.
And the session, with professional facilitator Richard Cushing from Waldron & Co. of Seattle, is costing the city $2,000.
With an audience, “we would feel constrained,” said Dubois. “If you had an argument with your husband, would you want to have it in an open public meeting?”
Sharing ideas
Team building can happen, Dubois believes, if there’s “a free and open sharing of opinions, and maybe a few expletives deleted.”
She hopes the team building will move the council to a point where they can “learn to respect one another . . . to be a group that’s efficient, instead of sniping and trying to one-up each other and point fingers and make long-winded speeches.”
Such a council “would be a whole lot better for the city. We would have shorter meetings and we would get things done.”
Schubert likewise doesn’t think the council members would feel free to express themselves if the public were watching.
“My feeling is we need a new beginning,” he said. “We’re all either part of the solution or part of the problem. We all need to make a decision to be part of the solution.”
Cushing has run team-building workshops for other city councils, including Medina’s; some were public and others weren’t.
When the public is not allowed in, “the participants feel safer,” he said. “They feel like they can be more candid.”
Friday’s $2,000 non-meeting could be the start of a less-turbulent 2009.
Last year was rocky for the council and staff, with the firing of longtime City Manager Bill Elliott and a welter of struggles over fee increases, affordable housing and other hot buttons.
Along with the $2,000 for team building, the council agreed in late 2008 to pay Waldron $20,000 to recruit a new city manager.
Cushing has advised the council to team build first, so that it can present a united front to the city manager candidates Waldron will begin searching for by March.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
