Gordon and I started the organization with Jeff McKay and Dorothy Austin and I have worked for a long long time, for many many months to try to create an organization on this island that could help the island to preserve and protect itself and we were focusing particularly on historic and natural preservation, hence the name The Orcas Society, or a group of people, we felt society was a nice way of saying that. The Orcas Society for Historic and Natural Preservation and then we called it O.S.H.N.P. We have an office upstairs in Our House, it's Liam Moriarty's old office, the Orcas Journal office, right up there on number six. It's upstairs in Our House. It's a little hard to find, I had a hard time the first time. The way you find it is that you all know Chimayos at Our House, well just to the left of Chimayos there's a little door there and then to your left there's a little narrow staircase and it actually is in the old historic home and it's upstairs in the attic and it's number six. You just go up the stairs and it's the first door on your left and it's a very small but very nice little room with a view of Eastsound and the Comet cafe so we can sort of see who's going where. You can come up and watch the people in town, it's kind of fun, so I welcome you to come up there, we're trying to have office hours from nine to five, we're you know as a new organization, it's sort of going to take a while to sort itself out but certainly the best way to reach me or Dorothy, we have a phone number, 376-5526 and I'll try to get that to you later, but please call any time for further information. Again we're in that sort of initial phase. We're trying to put something together. We don't have all the bugs worked out, but we certainly want people to feel free to talk, that's the reason why Dorothy and I have gone to the effort we have to make this happen, so Dorothy if there's anything else that you want to...
I would like to have a chance when it's appropriate
Yeah, go right ahead. With no further ado, here's Dorothy:
Dorothy: Glad you could all make it. Jeff said, we've been working since last November actually and so we are trying to find a way to help Orcas preserve its old island ways and so what have we learned so far and where should we be going? The answers that we thought of are four of them. 1) Orcas desperately needs an environmental and social non-profit organization to access private and foundation funds to provide research, education and assistance on important island wide issues. 2) This organization must not be confrontational. It should work to achieve a broad base consensus for the issues and seek to bring our own community together instead of polarizing it. This is the best thing that we could do together. This organization will belong to and be open to everyone on the island. It should be thought of as a community service run by Orcas residents for Orcas Islanders or for Orcas. Due to be run by strong, honest and dynamic individuals, but not dominated by any one individual or group. Neither should it be party to hidden agendas, politics, or special interests. It will be independent, open and fair. Some of our roles should be that we should form an island wide community council to advise governments of our interests. We should create a public information and research office and staff open to all. That sort of means that, in the terms that I know of now, I've been spending every Tuesday, I go to public access time and I've also spent a lot of ferry time going to the permit center, and to mainly, to Public Works and those kind of places and that takes all day. It takes a special organization to be able to keep up with Friday Harbor and to close the information gap. That's what I found just working with issues in Eastsound. From an EPRC meeting to reality is like light years away and by the time information gets out its too late and so we want to correct that, we want to be ahead of the team and participating in it and able to design our future. That's basically what we can do instead of having it happen to us, we ought to be in it designing it, right? The look of it, the feel of it, the cost of it, all of those things. So, under that its sort of like yeah, we can help preserve our historic buildings, our scenic roads. Roads are a big issue. Farms, farms are big. Landscapes, all those things etc. We should preserve local marine, our ecosystems. Eastsound. That should always stay just like that. Lets see, we should preserve upland forests, wetlands and meadows. We should promote public and non ?? transportation. I know a lot of you in the room have helped create walking path systems for Eastsound, that's its absolutely being ignored by every single person in office practically. And there's designs for one-way systems and parking and all kinds of good ideas that haven't been touched yet by the authorities that we can actually promote and get working. Create an Orcas growth commission for that reason, for better use of public works funds. Work for improved land use planning and land use plans. Jeff might want to clarify that later, but land use is a big one. Work to improve and diversify local economy and jobs for its environmentally and socially compatible industry. Work to improve recreation and public access. That's a big one right here in Eastsound. We haven't lost it yet, but it sort of looks like we've lost this world class view, but the public gets it as you come into town, right there across from Outlook Inn where the parking has always been. Well our permit center has already approved the plan to block off that view completely. I don't know if any of you have read it, but I got to write that guest editorial in which I mentioned that a more representative vision for that area and there's funds for all of this, lots of them from the state level for public access to shorelines and that hasn't been touched at ?? county, but we could have a nice little stopping off spot that's owned by public works, a little brick ??, a little wall to sit on, a place to stop there, you could have a ramp down to the beach, but what we have are people who are very short sighted and who will block such a thing, and that means, it's our heritage and the world's heritage. Anyway, we should work to improve recreation and public access. We should work, I like the idea of public foot paths too. Work to save island residents and properties from development through rising taxes. Create an educational research and arts grant fund to promote historic and natural preservation and arts projects in the community.
Jeff: I think what we're trying to do here is that these are ideas that Dorothy and I have come up with and have actually gone over them with a number of people on the island, but don't think we want to create an organization that everybody's involved, so we're not saying these are the things that we want to do, we're saying that we're suggesting these and part of the reason for this meeting tonight, I think one of the main reasons is that we get input from the public is what this board was formed that flipped the page where we get into our community discussion phase. I'm going to try to write down the ideas that come here, so that we can work to focus on that and try to tackle some of these issues. The key is that we want to have a non profit corporation that would allow us, about Orcas Island, to access both private donations funds, people could make donations for tax deductible purposes and also to create an organization that could go out and get money from the foundations. I don't know if you know this, but there are literally billions of dollars of money available from foundations. The Packard Foundation, Mr. Packard who started the Hewlitt-Packard Corporation has just millions and millions of dollars that are available to pursue environmental projects, but you need to have a very specific type of non-profit corporation that will allow you to go to apply to them to get a grant. If we had that organization here, we could start to unlock some of that money and to enable ourselves to do the studies, to hire the experts, to do the surveying, the assessment of needs, to really understand from the public standpoint what we're doing, rather as we've done in the past from the line of a few individuals who donate their time and don't get paid for it, or to ask the county to do it and you know the county tries, but in many cases they can't, in most cases they can't do it, they don't have the funding or sometimes don't have the ability to do it, or to ask a few individuals who have money to finance this and that's really asking too much of one or two individuals to pay for, particularly when there are foundations there that are exactly for that purpose. So, I think the key thing to focus on tonight is that we want to form this organization and second of all, we want to find out from the public, we want to make this a service organization, we want to have an organization that works for the people of Orcas. We want you, the members of the public to want us collectively to figure out what we want to do, what we want to focus on and that's why we've asked Bill Apple to come up here. Bill, of course has experience in working with non-profits, but he also, because of his background in working with county governments and land use issues and some very extensive background, I'll let Bill tell more about what he's done, but Bill I think is an excellent person to help us as a community. Bill's also done a lot of work over on Waldron and I think he's had a lot of experience in how Waldron has put together its community and worked together to try to protect itself. The idea is that Bill could maybe give us some additional ideas, some insights in how we can organize and how we can work together to make sure that we're really addressing and protecting ourselves from issues that we really should be looking at. Is there anything else. All right I think if Bill doesn't mind I'd like to ask Bill to go away and can we talk about...
Bill: That was a quick engagement. I want to say this in all fairness, but I'm not a well known lawyer in Seattle, I'm a little known lawyer from what was to now a well known island in the San Juans. I've had a lot of fun practicing law for about 33 years. One of the things, you know we all have dreams, everybody's in agreement. But you have to remember that the word Utopia is Greek and it's English translation is nowhere and one of the fun facets of my practice in the past has been to advise Utopian communities who are forming and I have a standard ?? lecture as to why it must not work. And the thing about Utopia is that I always know that it's going to turn out that I'm going to be right because human nature, human needs, people change, death, illness, divorce, childbirth, growth, the need for change, the need for all kinds of things means that preservation is and I respect the name of what you're shooting for, but preservation and the fixed goal is simply impossible. It is always fascinating to watch people try to encase their lifestyle and ?? because it isn't possible. It has a very high cost on the individual who tries it and ultimately the individual's inner self rebels or their spouse rebels or their children rebel and what you have when you encase something in ?? pure preservation is basically Williamsburg and nobody grows up. No one stays in Williamsburg. It is a showpiece. One of the things I think you have to be careful about is when you think about what it is you're preserving, you're preserving life, you are not preserving the past. Life only exists in the present. Now there are values in the past that are carried down. Those you can use and in using them you preserve them. But values cannot be legislated in the areas of ?? on people's living and the way we've found that out, if everybody talked about the Waldron Plan, and what do you mean I can't have two flush toilets? The fact is that there are limitations to regulation. There are no limitations to dreams and yet every human being has to make a deal with every other human being because that's our social rule where we allow and are allowed to carry on our lives. Now, the form we have is called government and government is a very clumsy and inept method of carrying out the group dream. There are countries that operate with government that have no constitution, have no stated guides, the United Kingdom is one, it has no constitution. New Zealand is thinking about adopting a written constitution because it has discovered that it does not have a homogenous strength and so what they've discovered is they have to write out their constitution. It's their vision statement. It's what the court laws use and I would suggest that if you want to think about what it is you're looking for, you start with a vision statement. This is a kind of vision statement of what you've just heard from Dorothy and Jeff. This is what we're trying to do. This is what their vision is. The fact is, my speech isn't about the law. My speech isn't about San Juan County. You're the story and you have to write your own story. What I am is a technician in some of the tools that are available to allow you to write your story in a manner that's congruent with the systems that will allow you to put them in place. It might or might not work, but I have to say right up front is, know that it won't work, know that change will be necessary, know that the process is dynamic. Know that you will change, you will change your mind. The most rigid of you will probably change the most, I hope, I hope, and ultimately the greatest battle is going to be information and the attitude that you have to have on this is that your enemies are friends you simply haven't made yet and this is the process, to make friends of those who are your opponents. It is the place where you try out your values in a form that you can make it work in some form. But to give you an example, if you have disappointments with your, what we call your local government, and of course remember your politicians can say "well you elected me" or "the government is you" or "it's we the people, aren't you?" There are a whole series of things you need to know in order to integrate your life intentions with how the government works and top of my list for the moment is roads, but I get the local papers in far away Seattle and read with fascination, know that only a third of the story is told and only can be told in that ?? but you don't have the New York Times. But you do need to know that what the engineering financial constraints, for instance, that your public works and engineers are under and how their reward and punishment systems work before you face them with your value system. Understand theirs, because you need to help them move out of their rut. I wasn't sure if I would say that, but it's important that you both speak the ?? ?? ?? that's you're talking to them and you're not opposing them because they know and you know you're the taxpayers. What you say has a lot to do ultimately in the kinds of budgets that are approved both by the county general and particularly the road budget, that includes a lot of state and road tax laws and you need to keep an eye on those, you particularly need to keep an eye on those because if you mind winding roads and slow speeds you're going to have to make sure those roads stay narrow and you will find very strong resistance in the engineering and public works departments because their reward system is wide, flat, straight, shooting galleries??, and so, you need to be able to understand exactly what their standards are, why they are and respond to say "what we choose this aspect of the standards, and we choose that, and there's this way, and here is what it is" and you obviously have to go over their heads because it doesn't do any good not to, and that way you get their attention. This is a job that is not a quick fix. It is something that you can never take your hand off of. It's really like a high tension wire that you must never let go of, because like any government, you either do it, or it will be done unto you and the best example will be ?? our buildings and you know about this recent moratorium which the commissioners have passed which according to the paper and I don't what the legalities are. The new store is apparently grandfathered in by virtue of being vested by whatever application they have pending. The next maybe good, it maybe bad and it's a question of how you feel about it, and you're going to have to balance that one out. And one of the things you're going to have to balance out is more competition valuable? Are food prices going to come down? If food prices do come down and that's not ?? They might not, does that mean that people who work at certain levels of our society will be able to afford to live here or will food prices remain higher than they are on the mainland and therefore the cost of living excludes a portion of the society that we need to make our society whole. Is that what we're looking at and as much as you don't like big buildings know that big buildings on the mainland allow that portion of society to survive because it is not surviving at the incomes at which they are paid today. And so, you're going to have to balance that. It is not an aesthetic. For many it is survival. Water and sewer demands are usually, development follows water and sewer availability, particularly water availability. When I asked somebody once on the phone, I needed a number in water town, and she said how do you spell that, wood and I realized my Philadelphia accent has followed me and so ?? ?? my accent. But the utility extensions, the difficulties with the water tables. We have arguments now on Waldron. We have some person who firmly believes that every drop that leaves the sky becomes a drop of drinking water and by calculating the water that falls onto the exact area of the island, that is the cubic, that is the acre feet we have. Some of that, we believe manages to get into the salt water, but this person believes strongly that is available water. The information, the facts as to how this works, we'll tell you a lot about, how much development this island can tolerate. Another one which comes up on you and you don't notice it is water run-off and vegetation problems, because of course, every impervious surface, including rocks results in run-off and nature has accounted for a lot of this run-off and in the law of this state, water is called a common enemy. But what it means is anybody who is uphill from somebody can allow the water to drain down on the person below, but they're not allowed to excellerate or concentrate the flow, and so people who will casually in their buildings put in culverts or dig ditches and just run it off onto the next land are in fact, asking for trouble. If it comes down on a sheet where the natural form, that's permitted, but as more development occurs, there's going to be more conduit, more closing of streams, more killing of wildlife, and then as a result, not so much here, but certainly on the mainland, one of the reasons why we're going after the Canadian Salmon is because our streams in the lower 48 have been silted up. Canadian properties haven't developed to the point where the spawning cannot occur. A lot of this has to do, then of course if there's disappointment, people think about litigation. Well of course litigation puts a light in the eye and a spring in the step of any lawyer. It does because the idea is somehow it ain't a lawyer whose going to do something for you and I think personally I want to tell you is the only person that it will do something for is the lawyer, because lawyers win all lawsuits, if you understand what I mean. The plaintiff or the defendant may or not win, but the lawyer always wins and so you have to stop and think about if somebody says "let's you and him fight" taken out of Eric ?? "Games that you Play", you have to think about whose the looser, or whose the potential looser. As an example, associations, groups of people often think that what they want to do is go in there and they're going to teach somebody a lesson. Now in the first place, when you litigate, you have to assume that all other avenues are no longer available, the same basis that ?? wrote on war and that is, it's true that war and litigation are extensions of the policy. It's a way of carrying out what it is you are trying to do, but they have costs and for an unincorportated association to get into a lawsuit, as an example, the law is very simple. Every member of that unincorporated association is personally and individually liable for the entire debt of whatever ?? there is as a result of that litigation and there's one case that went to the supreme court recently where the attorneys fees and costs and damages were only $180,000 and there were only something like twenty members of the association and not all of those members could pay and so a few of them are going to pay the full amount. And so before people say "I'm going to get a lawyer and I'm gonna, I'm gonna" just remember 1) you've made the lawyer happy and 2) you've probably made your banker worried. I think that the thing to focus on is fundamentally planning and budgets. ?? as well as the information about what's going on about them. You have a comprehensive plan that's underway now, re-underway and this is an opportunity, it's not a just a question of forming a non-profit corporation, it's a question if integrating your activities with what the county is doing, because there will be a plan and to the extent that a non-profit corporation does studies, the studies you will want and the studies you'll be interested are those that are relevant toward what is going to happen to you. This is your life, your island and your issues and however varied your issues are I promise you that what's coming down the pike whenever it comes down the pike, you will want to have a configuration that you want and you will have to have a lot of information about what's going on in Friday Harbor because governments aren't bad, they're unconscious. But even a dog knows whether it's been kicked or tripped over and most of us are tripped over, we're not kicked, although sometimes we think we are. We think that the government's doing to it us or somebody is mad at us or something. That's usually not how it happens, it's some civil servant trying to do a job they're paid to do and they try to do it in a manner that involves the least hassle for that particular assignment and the least hassle and it will not surprise you to know that it involves the least amount of notice, the minimum amount of notice and there are a lot of things that don't require any notice at all, for example the land sub-division which tells you a lot about what's coming down the pike. And when you are looking at a project, a large commercial project, somebody says, "bam, I'm gonna put a mega store right here" you should know that there's probably about two years of planning going on in that and so once it appears, what you need to know is responding with litigation may or may not be the response to make, but you should know is that is you are two years late. You are probably about two years late. And so the way you resolve this is to get, is to assume that you're already late and try to get in early and that's the purpose of the planning process. Participation, I can't, I cannot say too strongly how important it is to participate in the planning process because it is the only anticipatory move that you can participate in that will have any effect on the process. This will have, this will have whatever, you know if you want bike trails, but you remember that the person said "You're going to have bike trails, well I'm going to drive my Lincoln, there's going to have to be room for everybody" but you've got to participate in it and if you choose to have an organization that is reactive, and seeks litigation as the cure for all, I can only tell you that you're doomed to a lot of legal fees, each of these lawsuits will cost you between, oh $40 to 100,000 depending on what's going on and the other side, the same numbers, but quite often the other side may or may not be better capable of handling those costs. And certain types of land use lawsuits can ?? back because the loser pays the attorneys fees, so you better win. This is a high hazard business, so all I'm suggesting to you is, there are cheaper ways to go and preventive law is far better than the mediate law and it's a lot more certain because it comes from everyone more or less agreeing or agreeing to dis-agree. It is your community, it is your law. Now I do know about this particular building that's proposed for the store. There are some people who do want to litigate and that's their business, but the only advice I can give you is kind of what happened to Camp Nor Wester is you have people who were upset enough to say "We're going to fight this thing and we're going to raise hell" and another group that said "let's cooperate and let's just raise money," and in the end in effect they bled each others political capital and neither could handle it. So all I'm saying is be aware of the political capital, the financial capital that you're dealing with. Now there are a lot of people who are not here who would like to help. They just don't know it yet. And the reason they don't know it yet is because they're not aware, you know ?? don't see danger in advance, they only see it when the building starts going up, then there's the people who cry. There's nothing wrong with that. Imagine what would happen to your adrenals if you reacted to every conceivable ?? ?? concern and we don't. We have a certain economy of energy, political, economic, physical. The focus is on the things that we think are real but a lot of people who've moved to this island and changed it, satisfied themselves, perhaps distressed others, but there is one factor that is in your favor in working with them and, and that is most people who have come to this island that the old islanders will call the "new comers" or whatever your words are for new comers, and that is that most "new comers" want to be the last ones aboard. That's the character of what it is they came for and they know perfectly well that as more new comers come, they're going to sink down into the swale from which they fled. I mean it's exactly the ?? They know that and they're hoping in their little hidey holes all over the island that it isn't going to happen and so, or their big hidey holes and you're going to have to educate them, the truth is they're not the enemy. No one is the enemy. You've got to make a deal and the deal is called governments and everyone must participate and if you form a non-profit, it should be so open that the people you like least participate, because if you don't have a forum to deal with the people with whom you disagree, two things happen. You don't have political credibility and they will find another avenue and usually because they get frustrated enough, they go through litigation and this is what happened on Waldron. There are people who said, "This will never happen, I'm not going to participate." And so they slept through it and like government, if you don't participate, it will be done unto you. It was perceived by them to have been done unto them and so they went to court and the success or failure of court isn't the point, it's the political capital, it's the loss of community and it's the loss of communication between individuals who disagree that I think was the highest price paid on Waldron. It shouldn't have had to be paid, but it was and it still is and they're still working on it and you're going to work on it because it is an impractical problem. It is a difficult problem. Now one other thing, about twenty years ago, I don't know how many people in this room remember North ??, but he and I had long philosophical arguments and we thought it would be a great idea if we took the Waldron community meeting and incorporated into a non-profit corporation. So I spent the Labor Day weekend and drafted articles and bylaws for this wonderful thing. He talked me into it. These were the days when he and Annie Dillard and I would argue at this little house and I said all right, North I'm going to do it, I spent this thing, I got it all done, I presented it to him and I really felt like Thomas Jefferson. And he said, "I changed my mind." And aside from having been sore, but he was and is forever my friend. He's right, because incorporating may be a purpose for the foundation, for acquiring funds, for carrying out certain specific functions, but the Waldron Community meetings survived by one unique feature that I don't know whether you can work for it here. But the Waldron community meeting cannot be taken over or usurped by any group because it is an arrangement where the forum is whoever shows, so you better show. Now I don't know how well that can be formalized in corporate documents because you can't do that. There's no corporate arrangement that can do it but Waldron Community Meeting has met monthly for more than twenty years. It goes back a good deal further. But you'll want some element that prevents a cabow such as, oh I was thinking about the Muni League in Seattle when there's an issue. Various committees get packed with the pros or the cons of a particular issue. I particularly remember fluoridation of the city water supply. You pack the committee, it votes, it goes out and the board has to approve it and you get what you want. That's not a valid process. You kind of get what you want, but the political validity is destroyed by that kind of behavior. And that's why it really has to be done in a form where you show up or miss ?? jeopardy. In Fact all that is is the mirror of where we are now. If you do not act with your present government or any with any government, I'm not criticizing this one, it will be done to you and you fail to act, you fail to get information and you fail to give your input, at your peril, when whatever it is that's bothering you is going to bother you more. This is a participatory business and what Jeff and Dorothy are describing is a nucleus, it's a tool to have an avenue of participation with more incisiveness then you can by saying "I don't like this," because you've got to go beyond that, you've got to say, "I don't like this but here's the solution and we met and agreed on it and here is the information and this can work." It is a sellable document, it has consensus behind it and anything that builds consensus has power and anything that builds division lacks it. And that's what you're looking for, is you're looking for a means to build consensus. This is a non legal pitch because governments fail for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the law although it does remind me a little of the joke in the New Yorker recently, this king frowning on his throne, the dog scratching lightly and two courtiers, its a filthy scene. The two courtiers talking to one another and said, "well the alternative is the government could be run by lawyers." And they obviously preferred that scene. I can answer technical questions, but I'm not here to push any technical solution. This business is an important business and it is your business. It is not my business, but I'm here to provide whatever assistance at Dorothy's kind invitation that I can for the evening, so the floor is yours.
Jeff: Before we go any further, I have the sign up sheet in the back which I wasn't able to get, but I'll get it right now and I also have, related to the Orcas store. I tell you what, I'll leave it on top of the supermarket proposal, an item put together, it gives an idea, if you are opposed and have thoughts about the Orcas supermarket and want to get some input into the permit center and the county commissioners, you might pick up this item here and take a look at it and it may kind of help you and give you some more information about what you can in order to have a better say about it, so to go further then, I'm going to stay up here and be the facilitator. Like one of the ideas that I'm very interested in promoting the idea of a public transportation system. Public transportation system on the island. It needs to be done and one of the problems is that the county government, county commissioners really aren't the ones to kind of lead that sort of discussion because it almost has to come from the community. We as a community have to say, "Gee this is something we'd like to look at, and then if we look at it, something we want and so this non-profit is a way that we can go to a ?? foundation and get some money to have a community discussion about public transportation to see if it's something we want and can it work, so that's the sort of thing I'm going to write to start off, public transportation and then any other ideas you have, I want to write those down. But I also want you to feel free to ask Bill questions if you would rather do that.
Should we stand up and talk with everybody?
If you want to.
Q. I mean that seems reasonable. Something I'm hearing from Bill I think, and I kind of want to check myself on this is, oh I'm Anita Manual and I'm living in Deer Harbor right now. Has something to with group organization rather than issues to deal with because if before you can really deal with issues you have to know how you're going to do it and I'm hearing from Bill that there's some questions I think about being an organization that is incorporated in order to get funds and what I hear is community meeting is somehow separate from that and that one perhaps should be auxiliary to the other and so I think that that kind of discussion needs to go on.
Jeff: Please, anybody else have any ideas or thoughts, just please step forward and say.
Q. I'm Amanda Azusan? I'm interested Bill in comments you have maybe about growth management and you talked about how the last person coming in wants to shut the door, and keep things as is and I can appreciate that attitude, but on the other hand, we're facing a built out condition that's three or four times what we are today and a lot of the citizenry doesn't understand the implications of that or doesn't know that and our landscape is going to look quite a bit different on Orcas in the future with that built up condition. So I'm curious first of all about the legal precedents of our community's controlling growth and how you deal with those very difficult issues of what it does to the social economic system if we try to control growth and just how does, how can communities deal with some of these really serious questions that we are facing?
Bill: Your question reminds me of somebody deciding to do their English paper for that week. The effect of ancient civilization on modern civilization. It's too broad a question to respond quickly, but I think fundamentally it's really very simple. Everyone must control everybody else's property. We all do. We've got a view obscured, a tree comes down, we don't have what the English have, it's called the law of the ?? ?? If you have ?? a two hundred year old oak in middle of the village square, that tree had legal rights to remain. It didn't matter whose property it was on. These were abolished when we revolted. Briefly in Washington it was the law, and then Washington law was changed to follow the laws instead of English law and so there are tools we don't have. We have a Constitution that talks about property. We don't have definition of property. The definition of property keeps changing. As you know in the 60's and 70's, property began to include entitlements. It became more diffuse. More and more, not in this state, but in most states, esthetic rights became property rights. That is, the government could control, could take property or just property for strictly esthetic reasons and for no other reason. Now Washington has to, in this state, has to have a rule about the public health and welfare somehow being involved. It might be done with a wink, but it has to be done. The whole business about the control of property and the build out, forces us all to be hypocrites. Particularly those who have children. I have children and I'm proud to say I have three grandchildren, but I also know that my children and my children are part of the problem, and or my remaining on the planet is part of the problem. It's a population problem and the question isn't a question of whether or not you can preserve Orcas, because the answer is you won't. The answer is how to keep those things which are good for our future that have more and more and more people in it. You will have a build out. Your children, your children's children are going to have to go somewhere and we can't say somewhere else, and so it is how you allow for a process that which we biologically and in our hearts are encouraging to happen, are accounted for and to retain the values and the spirit that have been carried from the past and presented to us by our forebears. Now that is a poor way to answer, but I'm saying that is what the restatement of the problem is, that it is insoluble, if preservation, that's why I refer to lucite, preservation under population pressures is impossible. And so you're going to have to pick and choose. As you work on this list, one of the things that you probably won't be able to do is to stop x or stop y. The question is going to be how x or y are going to happen. It is steering and that's what planning does and that's why you have such a dire build out in this county of the estimate of what your population is going to be because it reflects what the population trends are estimated by the planners. Their stuck, we're stuck with the part of, we're causing it and so in causing it, this is part of our cleanup. This is so we live, this is so we can have a piece of truth and beauty and not have ugliness, poverty, unhappiness and ignorance cover us all. This is your challenge.
Q. I have a question for you Bill, I'm a tree hugger and I like trees a lot and I've heard rumors that people are going to end up having to ??? San Juan county residents have done some research, are showing that there are more logs in San Juan county than in any other county ?? ?? ?? and I'm curious how ?? trees that ?? ?? and a bunch of other things how to ?? the economics of all that, find some kind of ethics and I'm interested in trying to maybe put it on the ballots or incorporate it into the Comp plan and instead of people being paid to clear-cut their land or whatever, to have more of them and ?? ?? how can we put land ?? into our government that provides a better future, I mean for the trees for example ?? ?? ?? Is there any kind of protection for ?? ?? that we can put into, I don't know, the November ballots or into the Comp Plan, how can we protect ?? like trees?
Bill: I guess there are a couple of things. It's a little bit like saying I'm an alcoholic and as in all conflicts there will be losses and I think the other thing you have to remember is that imposing taxes and imposing restrictions may or may not be part of the answer. Let me get to one other thing. Think of the time frame. There are tree huggers who are prepared to say the answer will come in three hundred years. In other words, look beyond your lifetime. Don't assume that you're going to cure everything right in the here and now because it simply isn't possible. There are restrictions on logging, there are restraints on logging, but the problem is in our society, trees are property, they are economics, it's just like a vegetarian saying, that farmer has a lot of cattle, I don't want any of them slaughtered. That's what you're telling the person who is logging. This isn't just a consciousness issue, it is an economic issue and increasing the economic burden on somebody at the same time restricting the use of their property might not be a rational solution. Now I have an opponent in many ways, he thinks he's my opponent, I don't consider him mine, but I think he thinks, it is and that's Billy Carlson on Waldron and the fact is that he owns a lot on Waldron and during the hearing on recall of the Comprehensive plan, he said something that was very true and what he said was really implimatic? of how our system works and it's not a bad statement, when he said something about how he cared and some people sort of made noises, they didn't believe him, he snapped out, "If you don't like it buy it." And the fact of the matter is that's the rule of our society. That's how it is and what we've got are people who don't own the land trying to say how people who do own the land should behave about their land and in our society, if you pay for that land, we have the rights that Roman power familias? had and the Roman family, who as the father could kill his children with impunity. Now, we've come a long way since there, but as you can tell, we're not there yet. But the point I'm getting at is we have a system of property that simply allows people to do what other feel are hurtful, devastating, shocking and horrifying things, but it is one of the fundamental aspects of the economics of our society and simply passing a resolution or an ordinance or a tax from the county, even if it were possible, and I have to say as a lawyer that I doubt that it would be effective, is to really not dealing with what property is and in a place like this county, property includes view and that's why people come here. I remember somebody at the Waldron meeting saying when it used to be a farming county, the real estate was viewed as the junk. Nobody could grow stuff near the shoreline but inland it was all good farming land or such as it was, it was probably ?? soil, but that good farming land, that was valuable and now all of a sudden, the rocks, the trees, the nymphs and dryads are important. That happens to be important to me, I'm not saying this laughingly except to know that other people view it very differently. They say, "Look I've made my living, my parents made their living and my grandparents made their living by cutting trees. I'm a tree cutter, that's who I am," and so you need to know that you're going to have an intense political reaction and an improbable action by the county commissioners that will go after an industry that might export a lot of logs, I think of Waldron when I think of islands in San Juan County, it's also true though that San Juan County timber, because of the winds tends to be more twisted, it doesn't generally grow straight except in protected areas. So it isn't the best timber, but you know, the people have to live and if you're going to restrict somebody's living, you better think about how you're going to replace the living and this on your list is a good one as to how people are going to have appropriate livings. One of the things that hit this county in the 70's was under the subdivision laws, is that people who have been living for years by selling off a quarter an acre a year out of their farm and they've been doing it for many years and surviving that way were suddenly prohibited from doing that. Was anything done for them? No. They were literally starved out, they had no further income and they had to sell the whole thing and leave. Was that a good idea? You see that was a high price for what somebody thought was a good idea. Every solution has a danger to it and if you go down this list, you're going to find lots of great ideas, but you're going to discover that there are going to be costs to people that you've got to respond to. And that cost is sometimes more than money and you're describing trying to solve a problem that is non monetary, that is the destruction of trees about which you feel and I feel. But the solution to that is going to have to be monetary because it's their living and you're going to have to build that into your solution and not by extracting more money from them, is all I can say.
Q. My name is Yon ??. I'm certain part of the problem is that the Realtors and I see a great community in that the more we preserve, the more expensive the rest becomes and one of the things that we want to preserve on this island is diversity in our population and so we want to preserve and one of the things we want to preserve is diversity and the more land we preserve and I certainly applaud the work of the San Juan Preservation Trust and I love the Land Bank, but we're becoming a community of the rich and the more that is preserved, the more expensive everything becomes.
Q. This is what Vancouver B.C. discovered when you have a moratorium on residential building. The prices skyrocket. You have moderate kind of housing, I don't even want to say low priced housing anymore, John, I'm just curious, what is sort of on the lower end, what's sort of the average priced house selling for on Orcas Island now.
A. It is hard to find a single family residence ?? a home on a relatively small lot for much less than $150,000. There are some, but very few.
Q. I'd just like to say that I think the most important thing Mr. Appel said that we all should be is that nobody is the enemy and we all have got to work together and we've got to understand that everybody else including, whether we agree with it or not, or we can't get anywhere. I believe that's the most important thing.
Q. My name is George Post. That very issue ?? If the people that disagree with ?? supported by the land's laws and the traditions of our culture and ?? this is the juggernaut that I see that we're up against, it may feel a little bit discouraged in that I don't that turning around ?? to that segment of the population that rides the economic wave. to say "Oh we'll stop, we'll all just quit doing that," and the people who sell their land, "Oh, I ?? sell it at that price." That economic, cultural thing that we're up against as the population that goes with it is overwhelming ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? My purpose to come here, I was reading the paper today I wanted to read a paragraph about, it comes from Iran where they have revolution and are trying to sustain that revolution and want to go back to being terrorized by the state police and things like that ?? ?? ?? but they still have their way and one of their ways is their religion, their whole culture is at stake and they're looking at the juggernaut of both capitalism, industrial powers coming down and saying ?? ?? ?? And what one of their leaders said was ?? ?? ?? ?? "This strategy for preventing the global secularism of MTV and pulp fiction from overwhelming the Islamic tradition is for Iran to improve the quality and appeal of its own cultural products to compete with strength and immunize Iranians from bad influence." For me its that idea that we have some sort of cultural form here some sort of vision that we can say, "This is what we stand for", and then press that in with the planning process. Impress that every time we get the chance and invite as many people to join that effort. That's the only way that we can preserve, we won't hold on, but we can preserve a core of our own cultural values. That's my only defense ?? in the face of what we have, that's why I come to these meetings, how much energy is here we have to resolve and to actually and maybe even not take the hottest? profit themselves, to sustain what we have. That's why I try to find the very core of our community that we can appeal to everyone, maybe not everyone, but at least enough to hold the core and to hold our culture that we want to preserve and I have known how to do that ?? ?? constant communication and press together ?? ?? ?? It works finally because the forest doesn't give up, we can give up, but the forest doesn't give up. I just want to say that I'd like to see the energy coalesce around some vision. Without that vision there's no ?? ?? ??
Q. My name is Walt Corbin and we keep talking about county but the organization ?? Orcas. I think we tried it some of the people in this room here, we have a lot of people on the other islands who feel the same way that we do and if we talk about county issues, you're going to be alone. We've got to include the rest of the county if you're going to talk about county issues. If you're going to talk about Orcas issues that's something else but I hear so much that we're transgressing over into county issues is therefore we have to as George said, get the county involved, that means other people eventually because you can't do it yourself, you get burned out. Orcas will get burned out. Now if you're talking about Orcas issues then that's something else and one of the things about Orcas issues that I saw when I was ?? is the fact that we absolutely no power on Orcas to control our way of life. We don't have a planning commission that's recognized that has any validity in front of the county commissioners. But I think that one of the first things I would recommend if it's just going to be an Orcas only group and you're only going to concentrate on Orcas issues, then I think that we have to lobby and lobby hard to get a planning commission for Orcas itself so we can elect people that represent us because the people on the planning commission have to start ?? not representing Orcas, but of representing the county and we do need, we are unique and if we're going to treat this organization as an Orcas, then we definitely have to have a plan that means something and we can rant and rave and run banners and do all we want, until we get into the political process to make those changes to be what we want them to be, until that happens and we can only happen to a planning department because we have only one commissioner. I think that's what I'd like to see us concentrate on.
Q. I feel an ambiguous question that I'd to put to you. My feeling having lived in this community is that there is a basic fundamental problem that we are not our own government on Orcas Island. We often feel reticent to participate in county government because of Friday Harbor, our communication with Friday Harbor is difficult. It's hard for an ordinary person to participate in county government because it means taking days off work and going to Friday Harbor. We don't have a situation where we meet as a community as Waldron apparently does. We don't have community meetings on Orcas whereby we come to some consensus and have discussions as our own community. We haven't really even defined ourselves specifically as a community in having our own issues separate from county issues and it's always occurred to me that there is a need for an avenue where people come together regularly and have a sense that they can participate in their ?? as a community here, identified with Orcas and have some kind of legal standing as a democracy. People coming together, speaking their minds, sharing with each other, coming to consensus and having it have some power for the county. What kind of form could we create for that? I'm a little concerned about, because efforts in this direction have often been around a particular advocacy, a particular bias. But my concern is that this can be ?? from not having local, democratic, participatory government of its own. What kind of forum can we create to answer to that problem.
Q. I just want to add something to what he's saying. What comes to mind is that Waldron has certainly a whole lot less people, maybe no more people than could fit in one room and Orcas has a fairly less larger population and somehow in this, that difference has to be discussed.
Bill: Your question is a fair one. I would divide the human race into two categories. Those who look at problems such as this in terms of structure and those who look at problems in terms of content. You actually have a government that you can participate directly in. The problem is you don't have the tool by which to participate directly and by that I mean you don't have sufficient information which has to be made available to basically everyone. You don't have cohesiveness or consensus because with consensus comes the power that Friday Harbor would recognize, and I say Friday Harbor, referring to the county seat. The county government is actually a very good form of government because it is a very large amalgam of all kinds of powers. The state legislature in its wisdom abolished towns and while they are a category of incorporation that you might otherwise not consider, which would be 400 people within a square mile, it's no longer possible to have one, the lowest form of city is now a third class city and I think it requires two thousand people within a square mile and I don't know that Eastsound would get there. Maybe it would. I honestly don't know, but that's what you're looking at for being able to incorporate in other municipalities. But I guess my feeling is you could if you work this right get the best of both worlds, although I certainly hear what you're saying, but I think what is important is that you can make your voice heard in the county seat. It is the method by which you need to make it heard that I think you need to arrive at, in other words, get ?? the content, the form of what it is you might want to end up with may depend on the content. Some of these issues, certainly transportation may be county, they also may be state and one of the neat things about dealing with the state is you can bypass the county and talk to state people, however, if you create the kind of enemy that has control over transportation, that's foreclosed. You can't ?free-wheel? and so what I would recommend for the moment is leave the form of this thing amorphous until it is you decide what it is you want to do with it, and I think in direct response. Waldron system is small, relatively small, not everybody comes. It has the hazard system of, if you don't show up things can be voted in. But three words have been used concurrently ?? ?? ?? but county, island and community and I think you're going to discover what we've discovered on Waldron and that is Waldron is number of different communities, not very many, not as many as you have and not as large as you have, but before you think in terms of island, think in terms of community. Think how Doe Bay will say, "Hey we don't want those East Sounders telling us what to do." Think about how this is going to play out. Think of all of the implications because you could create a monster if you don't look at it carefully and that's why you have to think about what do we want this to do, what issues do we want to deal with, what kind of an animal, does it need two legs or four, does it need fur or scales in order to do what it has to do, what we want it to do. And then I would get to your question of and how do we make the process democratic, how do we assure input, how do we get the information and how we're going to fund this sucker and I think that's why we keep thinking about non-profit to act as the conduit for this because this does take money. Good people, it takes skills and it takes information and it takes a lot of footwork. But that's the proposal as to how it might be looked at.
Go ahead Bob
Bob: Well I think I have the secret to success on all these matters and that is and it's what worked for Waldron and that is overcoming boredom. On Waldron you have at any given meeting and there are a ton of meetings, you probably have somewhere between a minimum of 15% and a maximum of maybe 60% of the population that is participating and this goes on month after month and in some cases, week after week. And it means putting up with the person who you really can't stand and listening to them talk for fifteen minutes when you're not interested, but staying there and sticking with the process. The number of people here tonight is extraordinary. It's great. It's more people than I ever saw on any meeting on the comprehensive plan which has a lot to do with all of our lives. It had I think, 6 people show up at the meeting on Orcas dealing with the specific regulations that deal with everybody's life. Six people showed up! Why? People have something to do, they had guests over, their kids were... whatever. But anything that a group wants to happen I think can happen in this county if people stick to it, but it takes more than one meeting and it takes work and it takes grinding through boredom and sitting through and listening to somebody who you may not agree with and working until you come to a consensus and it has worked on Waldron because the people there say we are willing to give up a whole lot in our lives if it means protecting our island community, but it is a lot of work and if the people on Orcas are willing to do it, I don't think it matters what form or whatever, it's the people willing to come to the meetings and do the work and willing to listen openly to somebody who they don't like and somebody they don't agree with and if you do it long enough, I think a lot of the good can come out of it.
Bill?: Listening is an art. The other thing is there's a sociological thing about condominiums. It's been recognized in condominium governments that generally speaking about 10% of the condominium owners will participate in running the association and this means that condominiums of less than 10 units sometimes are not viable. That's maybe paying for bigness but you need to know that about 10% of the population is going to do what Bob is describing. Waldron's higher maybe the boredom? for other things is higher, but don't be surprised if people don't show and you think they ought to. What Bob has described is exactly how people are. Understand that. The other thing you need to understand is that when people volunteer to work on these things they need support. For instance, who are the good friends and supporters of the ministers of this church? People have to take care of the caretakers and you really do need to, because people burn out. It is volunteer. It is a ?? that is very hard work. The only thing you can do is to have some very good people with a good sense of humor and share it a lot. That's what works on Waldron.
My name's Bill Ingram and I've been a member of a small organization that probably represents about 10% maybe slightly less of the county. For about a decade I've been involved with these people. I'm going to sit back down if you don't mind and it's really interesting because part of our charter is to see that the comprehensive plan is followed and this was something that created by the people, maybe not so many of the people according to Bob, but at any rate we wanted to see that it was followed and that the laws were obeyed and by and large over the years, we've suddenly become this labeled a political organization and we've been called extreme by one of our own county commissioners and it always surprised me to think that it's extreme to insist that the law be followed. Now that doesn't seem to me to be very extreme, in fact that seems to be very American or very community oriented and we are conservationists and preservationists and it's called the Friends of the San Juans and we do exist and we're pretty much primarily based in Friday Harbor because that's were the county seat is and going back to what Bill and others have said, it takes a lot of work to attend the county hearings and as Dorothy has been doing, public comment and things like that, you really have to attend and pay attention and be involved to know what's going on before the proverbial whatever it is hits the fan, you know before you start seeing a building coming up, you know when the permit was issued. You know if you stay in touch with the process and that's very difficult and we try to keep our finger on the pulse. Peter Fisher here was a good help with the community survey that we did several years ago and we had a very excellent scientifically done survey that polled the residents of the county, one out of six I believe was how many people were questioned and we got a response from one out of five, or some incredible phenomenal response and it was very interesting how closely that is aligned with the present vision statement that we now have with this new comprehensive plan that we're working on now. I just have to say that, I know this is going to sound like a plug but I do want everyone's support in that organization, this organization sounds like a good Orcas based type of idea to see that we do follow the laws that we make as a community. The Comprehensive Plan that was passed back in '79 or whenever it was and the new one that's going to be coming around that corner. It requires incredible vigilance and I just want to reiterate that and it does take a lot of work, but people stick with it.
Jeff: I want to open up just to make a comment too on that because this is an important issue that Dorothy and I have had, of discussions from a lot of people about and that is the fact that ?? ?? Doug Scott, the executive director of the Friends of the San Juans is that we already have a very good environmental organization on San Juan and they have acknowledged that they've really been more of a San Juan group and they're trying to branch out, go to Orcas and Lopez and they've been saying, look we'll do what you're doing and while I think that's a great idea personally and I want to be a partner with the Friends of the San Juans and want to support them and am, I think there's also to me and I really want to get some comment on this because we need, as a community, as Orcas people we need to think about this. Personally I think we also need an Orcas based organization for Orcas specific issues and I'd like to flush that out a little bit, I know we don't want to spend all our time doing that, but I think that's something that we should continue to discuss about, if we're going to form our own organization, then we should have a reason and understand why we're doing it.
Dorothy: If we are separate than Friends of the San Juans, then I would say that it would be my intent that what we'd do, I think here is where I need to clarify. I think that the way would get funding and get information in order to be able to give and much as we need to give is to create alliances and one of our first alliances would be with the Friends of the San Juans. That probably would work. There are groups out there, on Lopez, on San Juan, or Waldron. We create alliances with these. We become aware of each other and we share information.
Bill: One thing I want to add and one of the things you might want to think about in terms of the organization that you're, that's floating around here, looking like an amoebae, ?? ?? is why am I on Orcas and not on San Juan Island, and not on Lopez Island and not on Waldron, not on Decatur, and not on Blakely. That reason is the reason for this organization and that's what makes it different and that's what makes this island a community. It is the one thing that defines this island as a community. Now there's lots of ?? reasons and those grow up like dandelions, but why you're here instead of somewhere else is what it is you are trying to make work. You're not dealing with San Juan Island and you're not dealing with Lopez Island. They're very different islands, they have very different characteristics. And focus on what is nearest and dearest to you because you made the decision to either be or stay here, and that is very close to your heart and that's what this organization is for.
Jeff: And I also wanted to add because there may be some confusion, I think most of you already know that Mike Creichton and some other people are in response to the Orcas store are forming another organization, I think there was a letter to the Editor in the paper, they're called O.R.C.A.S. I don't know that much about what they're ?? ?? but they're forming another organization and they're having a meeting next Thursday.
Next Thursday, School Gym 6 p.m. A week from today, school gym 6 p.m. to talk specifically about the situation of both the Orcas village and with the other small activities centers not counting Eastsound ?? we have a small activities centers on Orcas Island. Please everybody come and tell your friends.
Jeff: Dorothy and I have talked a lot about, and again we want to encourage discussion about this, but we were trying, in discussions with Mike Creiger and a bit with Bob, my feeling was that we are really complementing their organizations. They have a specific function, they want to focus on the activity centers, start with Orcas village and focus on the other activity centers around the island and not talk about, not really look at Eastsound, because Eastsound already has a sub-area plan and that's sort of the focus, they want to look at the store and they want to look at activities in the activity centers and Dorothy and I are really looking for an Orcas based organization, our deal was that it would be more of a service...
Dorothy: Less Confusing. It's just about us. It's not one thing or another thing or centers or whatever, it's about issues that are consensus, that everybody's against, like what is happening to old people on Orcas, something that points to the other things that are specific problems, but that we can, I don't know, I'm having a ?? this evening hearing Bill and hearing everybody who's spoken, and that for the first time I'm really feeling like I am part of a community that includes the whole island. We have Moran state park, and we have Eastsound that looks a certain way and again, I'm changing about how I feel about living here, it's not just ?? ?? in that area or something, so I really think that other groups and all this sort of thing, it's very confusing. I think what we as a community and perhaps, I don't know how to relate this, community things through an organization, but I would like to keep it very clear. I think this thing ought to be where all the big issues come into and flow through. It's what we are doing. I'm very confused about Mike Creiger is up to.
Jeff: What I see it, from my perspective, what I'm really trying to do is to create the organization where individuals in this community can go, we can both work together to talk, discuss, define consensus about issues, but also to have the tools that we can access the funding that's available to do that sort of work and I think to me, that is one of the most critical things we can do, because I know personally, I've tackled a number of fights over the years and I've done it on my own time, my own expense and I was glad to do it, but it wears you down and I know of other individuals who have done the same thing and I would like to, I know very talented people in this community who if they had a bit of money, that could pay for their time, could do wonders here and I would like to see an organization created that we could go to the Packard Foundation, we could go to the ?? foundation and get some money. You're not going to get rich on this, but at least it's some money that can pay our expenses and maybe pay a small decent salary for the time that you put in so you don't run yourself dry, both physically and financially in doing so, and that's what I'm trying to create, but I want people to give me input and tell us what we're doing.
Miguel: Hi. I'm trying to start an organization, my name's Miguel and Bills' part of an organization, he lives on Orcas, am I right? and Friends of the San Juans sounds good to me if we had an Orcas branch, let's get on with it. What does the energy to starting an another organization? I was putting that out in the ethers. Just having started a non-profit organization, myself and funded it and I've gone that route, it's a lot of effort, a lot of expense, you have to deal with lawyers and
Bill: Yeah, that's awful, I agree.
Miguel: And I just want to throw that one out there because I say we could take the ball and run with it right now in order to have to put the energy into starting a non-profit... ?? ?? ?? and you've got a similar vision... I'm just going to...
Jeff: And I've had discussions about Doug Scott about that very thing and, two things, one is that Dorothy has made offers and we're still trying to find out exactly how much it would cost, so Dorothy's offered to help at least put the seed money in to create that organization so that perhaps that we don't have to worry about the financial aspect of that and the second thing and that is why I keep coming back to an individual organization which Bill I think was, I agree with Bill is that the Friends of the San Juans, it's history has been a San Juan organization and I know they're trying to extend and I think they can go county wide, but Orcas is it's own particular community and the problem happens, I can see very real conflicts happening if we want groups of the San Juans is that they have, they make grants to the ?? foundation, to the Packard foundation and it gets difficult for them to make two applications, one for Orcas and one for San Juan and they could get into a conflict, the Orcas people versus the San Juan people trying to do things, maybe two separate things, but going through the same funding source, so I think both from our standpoint as well as the foundations, it's better that we have our own separate entity that we can make it very clear about what we're going to do. I think it just gets very difficult and the only reason to me to go with the Friends of the San Juans would be just financially, that it was better, that we needed to go with them because we didn't have the financial ability to do it. I'm hoping, I'm not sure of that, but I'm hoping that we do have that ability to form that group and I want to say that Dorothy and I have talked about environmental and historical uses, but one of the things that's come out to me is other types of assessments and needs for recreation. There's been talked about, health care. One of the things that happens is that the people who most need help are elderly, our low income people on these islands are the very people who are ?? and least able to go to county government and tell what their needs are and one of the things a grant could be done is to show what the needs are for health care, and to provide, to be able to write that report and to make that case for those people who aren't able to do it as well as people who are better off or are retired. So I see this organization while I think maybe we want to focus, I see there are other areas besides environmental and historical areas that we could cover and again the point I'm trying to do tonight is just trying to get an idea about where we should go and how we should do it and please...
Dorothy: I was thinking about pollution and being on various committees I just want to give an example of what this thing could be. Like designing good projects that are good for Orcas. For example, ?? ?? you know there's that supermarket proposal at the ferry landing and whether they cut it down in size, it's still awful, they would make a shopping mall out of it, not just a supermarket, but something else, and lots of pavement. The main thing for me is that they cut down four acres of trees, there's no law against that, but anyway, the way to fight that idea would be to say that we're interested in public transport and non-petrol, you know ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? and what we could do is promote something like a park and ride system, this is actually working as a private corporation, a non-profit corporation in Desert Valley, in order to coordinate regional inexpensivetransport that work with the ferry system and we definitely need to influence the big wig ferry directors in order to give us passenger ferries because right now they want to give us bigger and more car ferries but anyway we have the Larson property which is by the airport and it could be well designed as a rural orchard and inside that rural orchard could be the cars that somebody wanted to put near the ferry landing, we could, if there are that many cars around, we could park them all more locally and have a great 21st century public transport system. So what am I trying to say. There are design ideas out there that would really help, like master plans, good ideas and we could all come together as a group to design our future. I see that as one of things that we could do and influence Friday Harbor.
Peter you were going to say something
Yes, I'm Peter Fisher. Is there a 501C3? that's already been set up? or is it in the ?? stages?
Bill: There's one that's available Peter, by happenstance, this morning at 10 o'clock I have a friend that was shutting down his 501C3 and I convinced him to pay the $10 to keep it alive for a year , but I think again that's a structural issue if you need a 501C3 you can always find one. The only thing about the Friends of the San Juans is that you want to make sure as what your programs are, are congruent. You've got two possible areas one is geographical, Orcas wants to do this, Friends of the San Juans then has to pacify members on other islands and so the Orcas group would only have to pacify that and the second is, whether the programs that this organization might end up interested in would be very different than what Friends of the San Juans might think are serious interests. I actually think funding is the last issue to be worried about. I think you need to focus on what it is you want to do. The players of the team will follow.
Ian Van Guilder: I see one of the problems that we have to deal with in the county is the problem with communications and the acquisition and dissemination of information. We don't have really the media resources to rely on to get both information to the people who might need it the most. So I think this kind of organization would really have to focus on setting up either processes or a means by which we can not only gather information, but also disseminate it quickly out to the community that need it the most and at the moment, especially on Orcas, we don't have that.
Bill: One of the things that's been discussed underground on Waldron that hasn't been serviced? very far is the possibility of having a 15 watt educational program. The license is free from the FCC, a lot of companies try to jump in to grab them, but community organizations are allowed to have those licenses and we were thinking for awhile about radio free Waldron. But there's no reason why an organization ?? couldn't do exactly that. You see, it's really all available, you just have to have people,
Walt Corbin: I might just add one thing that I do want to add to my earlier speech. There's a neat book called "Utopias on Puget Sound" and its last chapter explains why they all fail and the reason ultimately underneath beside the fact of changing economic circumstances is they didn't have a sense of humor. They had no flexibility. If you don't have a sense of humor and flexibility built into this thing, I don't care what else you do, it isn't going to work. But if you have those things in there, you're going to have a hummer and if you have a really good disc jockey, a little radio station, you're going to have people talking about it and you're going to have people on the hot-wire. It's out there. You can do it.
Jeff: With the new technology that's going on now over the Web, I mean in a very short time, you'll have potential ?? coming over the Web, and in addition to the Web sites, again this sort of money unlocking the ability to study this, give people the ability to set it up can be a tremendous asset. That's a good point and I agree with you completely. We need our own independent source of information.
We just received a grant of the Friends for a bunch of computer equipment free and soon we hope to have a branch, a place on Orcas Island where you can access planning information and pertinent county information from Friday Harbor.
Tape 2
I add to that flexibility and humor and tolerance and Jim answered that and I'd like to bring that up again as far as being able listen, being to listen to everyone. And what I'd like to see, like even in this room, less than half the people have spoken and I really like Bill's idea what makes Orcas different and one of the ways I could see in giving everyone participating is by having everyone say one word about Orcas that expresses their reason for being here, their sense of why they're here, their sense of what makes Orcas special.
sanctuary. nature. community. home. community, peace & quiet. community. nature. community. story. beauty. beauty. peace & quiet. community. natural beauty & community. community & natural beauty. diversity. poetic. connection. opportunity. privacy. It was easy for me to decide to move here, I lived in Los Angeles for 30 years, but I think the single most important thing for me is the opportunity to build a community. water. groceries...
Walt: Isn't it interesting how many times community was said, how many times beauty was said and peace were said or variations on that and I think the community is what binds you together, the beauty and peace are what you individually enjoy, but it is quite clear that you can't have one without the other and that's what this organization is about.
Jeff: I'd like to just mention I want to give a few more responses before it's 8:52. (You haven't come out with the cookies either yet) and Bill had a long day and came up here and I don't want to make him to have to stay and work any harder than he already has. I can't thank him enough for being here. If you didn't have a chance to say anything, or don't want to say anything, please we have our office up in room 6 at the Our House, 376-5526 and it's under directory assistance under O.S.H.N.P., or Orcas Society for Historic and Natural Preservation in case you forget, call directory assistance. Please call, leave messages, letters, stop by. We're trying to be here 9 to 5. We're in transition and we want to hold some more meetings and so, but in the interim please, it's been a great meeting, there's been wonderful information and we want to keep this going so in a space of about 10 more minutes if there's some additional comments, anybody who hasn't said anything that
Just a comment, I do hope that Bill's speech or lecture is made available to us through your office.
Well we'll try to do that. I would really like to do that. OK Bob.
Bob: In terms of your office location everybody should know its right next door to a fully functioning bathroom.
Jeff: A giant bathroom. I was lucky enough to spend the month of June in New York and it's funny. I hadn't really had that experience before how in New York people are used to these little tiny bathrooms and I got back and I saw this bathroom and I thought, Oh my God, it's giant!
Bob??: In terms of the multiple organizations that the Friends of the San Juans and this group O.R.C.A.S., I don't think any of these have to be in competition. What could be better than for instead of one group going to the county commissioner saying this is what we want, then if five groups representing different segments of the population, representing different islands all go to the county commissioner, and they're all saying this is what they want and it's the same thing. So we don't have to say I'm for this group, but I'm not going to work for that group. We can work for all these groups. They don't have to be mutually exclusive, but I hope people don't think well, this is just one, there can be multiple groups. There's almost four thousand people that live on Orcas and I think there can be a lot of energy out there and I think people don't have to pick and choose. All of these organizations that I see, most of them, they're working in the same direction, they all have different slants, they all have different people ?? ?? activists, but they're all going in the same direction and you really ought to keep them all going because that's how we will accomplish what we want to accomplish.
Dorothy: I agree with you Bob, and as long as we're all on the phones with each other, talking.
Peter, you had a comment.
Peter: Oh, I was just thinking in terms of cooperation, one wonderful example in the county was the Land Bank. As President of the Friends of the San Juans ?? and spent years in working with realtors ?? ?? and every group ?? ?? and I thought that was a marvelous example of working together on all the islands across all the groups and for those who are here in 1996 ?? percent of the voters voted in ?? remarkable case of a group like this accomplishing that.
This really has to do with kind of social ?? ?? ?? and public transportation relates to that and the question kind of is. I am at this point on the board of the San Juan County Counseling center and somebody's asked me to help be part of the group that, we're just sort of doing preliminary forming around caregiving and training caregivers and matching families and people who need ??, so the question kind of comes in, how do we relate to another forming organization that might have something, you know, are we part of it, is there some kind of process by which you help someone who wants to deal with this sort of social infrastructure issue, you know, do that job?
Bill: You can't decide what your organizational relationships are going to be with other organizations until you've got one. But I think what you're really suggesting is maybe your concerns were the only agenda this organization considers and it will be considered like any other issue on the agenda and see what it is the people feel they can do about it, that they will do about it. If there already is an organization existent dealing with it it's doubtful that an organization is going to say, let's keep firing at the same target. But I think it's a question of what the need is and whether it's being met and whether this organization wants to do it.
Well, it's feeling like you and me, just sort of like what we're doing ?? become part of something else, what we're doing, is there another kind of slightly more distant, but cooperative..
Bill: That's really structural, but cooperative is really the main aim and the question is or you individuals and organizations that work individually or for your organization, but you won't know until you've got this organization going and then time will tell. That's the only answer to that one.
George: I have a question to see if there is a show of hands, of how many people are interested in belonging to another organization that would focus on these issues?
Jeff: What that did, and would I would like to do and I've talked to Dorothy briefly here is that Dorothy and I are going to commit, very shortly, maybe within the end of this month to have another meeting to talk and maybe list the phone numbers, and to talk with as many of you as we can and try to set another agenda, we want to talk with all of you and really get this thing going and let you know when we can have another meeting and really try to focus in on what we heard tonight and come up with an agenda and maybe we're going to work with Bill, hopefully and find out about his friends' corporation that's available.
Dorothy: We're going to working on a vision so everybody work on a vision and bring it to the, well, we'll call.
??: I'm feeling like a juggler who is, that we are a juggler and we keep getting more balls up there and there are more balls than we anticipated, so we really do need a meeting to get together and figure out what we're going to do because, I think the community thing is wonderful. When I came up here, I came up here for the beauty, the peace and anticipating community. What I found is that there are a lot of communities on Orcas and some overlap and some do not. But if we are going to succeed, it seems to me that we need to form a community that is inclusive and I think we haven't really started that process. I mean we've started, but now we need to get together and figure out what's going on.
Jeff: I agree with you and I think that, I know, Dorothy thinks commitment and I think commitment and it's a two way thing. We're all involved and I want to work and hopefully everybody will work with us to hone this down, to get a better focus, to get a vision, you know to find, to really, next time we meet and Dorothy was saying to me, I think it's best we don't take the time now because we need to sort out with everybody when they can make it but hopefully in the next couple of weeks to have another meeting and really focus in and really get a lot better idea of where we're going. It's going to take time and it's not going to be easy, it's not going to be like that, but I think we've made a good start and I...
Dorothy: We can try to make it like that, thought because we have to.
Bill: I'd like to add one word of warning, truth and beauty are static things and only one person said opportunity and I think if you aim at something that does not have open ended economic viability, you will have failed. We need more like you in this because people have to be able to come here and live and grow and survive and prosper and not arrive here after they've prospered. It is absolutely imperative to the life of this community that it does not die, that you build that in and this is a kind of warning and a hope that you absolutely must include this and it must be viable and those people must speak for themselves, not be told what they'll be allowed to do, you need to hear from everybody who wants to cut down a tree himself because if you don't listen to them, you're not going to have a complete plan.
Dorothy: Thank you Bill be being here.