PORT ANGELES — A 33rd guest has been added to the throng that packed a June 24 Port of Port Angeles meeting at which Executive Director Jeff Robb resigned his position: Olivia the Pig.
Commission President Jim Hallett was criticized by speakers at the meeting for using the stuffed animal — Olivia is also a porcine fictional character in a series of children’s books — as a prop while explaining the commission’s meeting rules.
Commissioner Paul McHugh saw that the proposed minutes of the June 24 meeting omitted the red-garbed stuffed pig from the list of members of the public who signed in as attendees of the meeting and suggested at the board’s July 8 meeting that Olivia be added as “our special guest.”
McHugh wanted “to reflect the attendance of Olivia during the civics lesson that we all enjoyed during the initial part of that meeting,” according to revised minutes the commissioners are expected to approve at Monday’s meeting.
The pig had sat on the commission’s raised dais next to Hallett.
At times, he addressed it and held it while talking.
“It was strictly an attempt to deflect what might have been a very contentious meeting,” Hallett said Friday.
“My intention was to use her as a prop, as a person, to say, ‘OK, I’ll tell a story,’” he said.
“If someone wants to criticize me, if it went over like a lead balloon, I apologize for that.”
Hallett said a friend purchased the pig from the Seattle Public Library.
Olivia has returned to Hallett’s nightstand, he said.
“I don’t think she’ll want to show up again in public,” Hallett added.
“I think she’s shy now.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.