By Beth Hutchinson
Seeley Lake, Mont. 

How Far Will Sewer Board and Manager Go Using Questionable Practices to Seize Control Over Approval for Sewer?

 

August 3, 2017



SEELEY LAKE - The five business men on the Seeley Lake Sewer Board and their general manager Greg Robertson, henceforth called B/gm, have now conjured up at least three purposely twisted ways to try to get their sewer proposal past the constituents of the district!

First, the B/gm plan to “SHOW SUPPORT” for the sewer by using a reverse technique of not actually proving any measurable support. Under their scheme for an up-coming “Notice and Protest” event, they are requiring a count on solely signed opponents to “prove” that the board has buckets of support for taking on debt and moving forward to construction.

The “Notice and Protest” method is a highly manipulative technique used to refocus from proving support for the sewer to demanding proof of the negative. Rather than requiring supporters to directly sign a letter of support, this “Notice and Protest” tactic allows supporters to sit back and to do nothing.

It forces the opposition to do all the work and to expose their positions by being the only ones who actually must sign a letter. The biggest distortion comes in that anyone who doesn’t sign the protest letter, for whatever reason, is assumed to approve of the sewer project.

Second, the B/gm have connived to “super-enfranchise” owners of business properties (without even clearly defining what constitutes a “business” property).

This “super-enfranchisement” arose when the B/gm decided arbitrarily to charge business property owners twice the amount for sewer usage compared to what they intend to charge residential property owners. The B/gm then proceeded to give owners of business properties two voices in the sewer approval debate while giving a residential property owner only one.

Interestingly, after the July Board meeting, two attendees sought to triple check how many “Notice of Protest” letters each property owner would receive. Greg Robertson repeated several times that it would be one letter for each property owned. Lo and behold, when the PR website was reviewed a day or two later, it clearly stated that owners of business properties would receive double that number. Would you say we were lied to?

Business property owners have no legitimate reason for being gifted twice the benefits and influence that residential property owners get. As “business men” themselves, the Board fully knows that businesses already have the privilege of deducting sewer usage charges from their income taxes as a cost of doing business.

Third, guess who plans to count the signed protest letters of property owners brave enough to oppose the sewer and sign the letters that would become public information? Yup, that same conniving B/gm.

Numerous people in the district have expressed degrees of distrust for the B/gm due to the behaviors, actions and lack of ethics they have variously demonstrated.

Robertson has ended up functioning as a grand puppeteer working with an inept board that slides along learning little about its project’s parameters or how a proper board should operate. What respect can those six men expect after the sewer district constituents grasp how they persistently continue to operate in such an inappropriate manner. A lot of decision-making is being accomplished behind closed doors without sufficient public discussion or public board vote taking. The B/gm are failing in their public responsibilities.

Because it’s a small community, many Sewer District constituents have preferred to voice their concerns to confidants rather than in public for fear of reprisal. That just does not work to safeguard any aspect of community life.

* * *

A man I knew used to like to get my goat by saying, “In a democracy you get what you deserve. If what happens is good, you deserve it. If what happens is bad, you deserve it.” I hated to accept his jibes but came to see the truth in them. As citizens of any stakeholder group we’ve got to take the time to be correctly informed and to participate in keeping the civic process on the up and up…or we deserve what we get.

There is a solution to this support/no support issue if the Board has the confidence and ethics to pursue it!

Put the residential property owners fully back in the game by making all properties equal. Stick to the traditionally referenced democratic privilege: one person, one voice to be counted. Every property owner must receive one “Notice of Protest” paper for one property owned. Then, the B/gm must step away from processing the formal opinion count themselves: hand it over to an out-of-district, neutral party to assess.

To reestablish confidence in the Board, turn the matter of administering the process and determining actual “support” over to the skilled and trustworthy Missoula County Elections Office. To make the process equitable and clear, both actual supporters and actual opponents should be required to sign letters and to be counted.

No local person would ever see any of the letters: all names and preferences would be kept private! The experienced, efficient and oath-bound election officials would then send a tally of the bonafide “Support” and “Oppose” totals to the Board. The letters can be stored in Missoula in case the Board complains again and can be reexamined by yet another third party.

We can afford to pay for a clear and secure procedure.

 

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