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Port vote postponed on staffing changes

At their Dec. 19 port meeting, Port of Whitman commissioners delayed their vote on a resolution which enables the port’s executive director to sell port property at a value less than $10,000 in 2020, to the Jan. 2 meeting. This authority to sell Port district property must be renewed annually.

The commissioners reviewed the draft of this resolution at their Dec. 5 meeting.

The motion was brought on the table at the beginning of the meeting by Commissioner Kristine Meyer, but after further discussion, it was removed.

The reasoning behind the resolution’s delay was a concept brought forth by Commissioner Tom Kammerzell.

“I want to present a concept that could fill needs and holes with my concerns I’ve had with the Broadband LLC,” Kammerzell said.

“As I’ve stated a number of times, I’m concerned about having our executive director being 25 percent of the time working for the port and 75 percent of the time working for the LLC. I was thinking how to make a win-win out of this.”

Kammerzell suggested moving the current executive director of the port, Joe Poire, to be director of the LLC and hiring a full-time port executive director. He added that having just a 25 percent executive director would be a lot of responsibility to have in someone who is just there part of the time.

“For the good of the port it seems to me a reasonable concept,” Kammerzell said.

He noted he wanted to present the idea to Commissioner John Love, who was not present at the Dec. 19 session.

Meyer said having a complete discussion about this topic at the Dec. 19 meeting would be difficult since no materials were presented in advance.

“This is something bigger than simply approving administrative authority through resolution 19-21,” Meyer said. “We still have the timetable that is acceptable through the RCW and in alignment with our banking that we can take this up again on Jan. 2 instead.”

While the commissioners were in accordance with moving the resolution to the next meeting, members of the staff had some concerns.

Poire mentioned that if Kammerzell brought forth material to be signed to the next meeting and the commissioners signed it, they would be in violation of their two meeting rule for resolutions.

“The idea has complete merit, don’t get me wrong,” Poire said.

“Your calendar and staying in legal compliance and having an operation here is not going to come together and happen next meeting. There is a lot of day to day business that will be affected.”

Along with calendar and legal considerations, Kara Riebold, chief operating officer, mentioned how there would need to be budget considerations.

Meyer said she was concerned that if she put the motion back on the table Kammerzell wouldn’t vote to approve until the discussion of the other concept was complete.

Kammerzell agreed and said he would also like to continue this conversation with Love present.

“I’m going to keep this off the table, unless there is a problem with our timing, in not approving this until Jan. 2,” Meyer said. “I believe we are kosher to not approve this until Jan. 2.”

 

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