Inflammatory emails released by the city pursuant to a Public Records Act request reveal behind-the-scenes strategizing and advocacy among some Utility Advisory Committee (UAC) members, frequent emails about city business from UAC Chair Arlene Buetow to certain council members’ personal email addresses, testy exchanges between Buetow and City Manager Doug Schulze, and scorching criticisms by Buetow of city staff, UAC colleagues and citizens with whom she did not agree.
Buetow assumed the chairmanship of the UAC in March of 2012 and is now running for Bainbridge city council.
Under her leadership, the UAC’s mission has expanded well beyond the scope of the city’s UAC ordinance. She regularly emailed council persons Sarah Blossom, Steven Bonkowski, David Ward and/or Debbi Lester at their personal email addresses, with extensive comments on utility issues. Those four council persons often vote as a bloc on a variety of contested issues. When they were running for council, Ward, Blossom and Bonkowski were critical of the city’s management of utilities. Their candidacies were supported by the Ratepayers Alliance, a group that sued the city in 2009 over utility issues. Sally Adams, secretary of the Ratepayers Alliance, was occasionally included as a recipient of Buetow emails.
Except for routine matters like scheduling and a thank-you note to Anne Blair, Ms. Buetow did not include council persons Bob Scales, Kirsten Hytopoulos or Anne Blair in the emails produced to me.
UAC ordinance ignored
By city ordinance, BIMC 2.33, the sole power of the UAC is to “act in an advisory capacity to the city council” about utility issues.
The ordinance expressly prohibits the UAC from interfering with staff, as follows:
“The committee shall not supplant administrative advice on policy issues to the city council, but shall be in addition to staff advice. The committee shall not interfere with the administrative staff functions involving day to day operations of the city utilities.” BIMC 2.33.040.
The emails reveal that Buetow’s beliefs about her role and that of the UAC are at odds with the authority and limits set forth in the law. As she wrote to Anne Blair in June of 2012, “I applied to serve …[on the UAC]…because of my heart felt belief that the City’s Utility Rate Payers should have an advocate on the UAC.” [emphasis supplied]
At the core of her UAC leadership is an unapologetic, aggressive advocacy for the divestiture or outsourcing of management of the city’s utilities, regardless of contrary data or the opposing views of city staff, dissenting UAC members or other citizens in the community.
An email she wrote to Ward, Bonkowski and Blossom last December 21 lays bare her way of doing business on the UAC. With a subject line “it has been a year already and so little progress” (a likely reference to how long the three council persons had been in office), the email reads in its entirety [emphasis supplied]:
This is the reason you need to take action now if you still hold your beliefs. Do not let staff and city mgr drag this out. If a cost comparison will not yield your desired result because City continues to believe they need to micromanage the utility no matter who manages them than you just need to say enough. We are prepared to make a decision now. UAC will cooperate to that end if you just tell me what you need.
Arlene
Happy New Year
Our next meeting is Jan 2
The demand for immediate and specific action with respect to the water utility, coupled with a promise to deliver the UAC’s cooperation in achieving it, seems well beyond the scope of the authorizing ordinance that sets forth a clear directive to advise the entire council rather than lobby select sympathetic council members. The email also denigrates administrative advice that staff and the city manager might give, subverting the ordinance’s requirement that the UAC “shall not” supplant such advice.
Divisiveness and interference with staff
In March of 2012, Ms. Buetow sent an email to the personal email addresses of Sarah Blossom and Debbi Lester, providing her comments on the city’s Comprehensive Water and Sewer Plans. Throughout the document, she made disparaging references to the former Public Works Director, Lance Newkirk. She also suggested that city staff dishonestly overstates the amount of work necessary for the city’s water utility, writing (caps are in the original email):
“ALTHOUGH SINCE CITY STAFF HAS EVERY REASON TO MAKE WORK FOR THE WATER UTILITY AT THIS TIME IN EFFORT TO INFLUENCE THE FUTURE AND MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE UTILITY AS LONG AS POSSIBLE, I AM CONFIDENT THEY COULD AND WOULD SEND SIGNALS THAT MORE THAN IS TECHNICALLY NEEDED SHOULD BE DONE. THEY HAVE EVERY INCENTIVE TO TAKE THIS APPROACH GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY AND LACK OF OVERSIGHT.”
In June of 2012, she criticized the “ineptitude” of the “current public works leadership.”
In July of 2012, she sent to Dave Ward and Sarah Blossom an email wondering why staff had prepared an “unsolicited report” about the city’s Water Quality Flow Monitoring Program which, in her words, amounted to “grandstanding and marketing.”
In January of 2013, she wrote to Ward, Bonkowski, Lester, Blossom and UAC member Eric Turloff that it was “very disconcerting to say the least” that Deputy City Manager Morgan Smith provided an analyses of the city’s RFP for water utility management to Schulze and the UAC before Buetow thought she should have. “I am concerned that Doug is giving his staff too much latitude and independence and too little direction,” she wrote. “If he persists in this pattern,” she continued, “I have no confidence that he or his staff will cooperate in efforts to reconcile the varying perspective/analysis of the true cost of maintaining an outsourced water utility.”
The relationship between Schulze and Buetow was growing tense by then. In February of 2013, when Schulze had been on the job only three months, Buetow wrote to him, complaining that “financial activity availed to the UAC is more like a game of cat and mouse than a collaborative activity.”
Schulze replied, ” My goal is to create a transparent, responsive and effective local government. The biggest obstacles I have encountered at this point are related to the ‘gottcha game’ some individuals in the community are persistently playing and the reaction from staff of being reluctant to share information.” He continued:
“UAC members must be committed to working with staff and me to exchange ideas, explain or answer questions and improve. If UAC members are going to take the information and use it to strategize or attack staff we will all fail. Everyone involved must have good intentions. No hidden agendas or undeclared motives.”
Around the same time, Buetow complained to Blossom that the UAC cannot effectively oversee the utilities, which the City has neglected or mismanaged. She accused the city of having a “protectionist, holier than Thou attitude ever since annexation that no one except them can do things right, that cost does not matter, and that big brother knows best.” [emphasis supplied]
In March of 2013, she wrote to Debbi Lester that she had not found conversations with City Manager Schulze “to be at all productive” and did not want to talk any further with him on the topics of flow monitoring and water management without a strategy for doing so. Instead she suggested that she and Lester have a private discussion about the issues. Also in March, she wrote to Ward, Blossom, Lester and Bonkowski with numerous critical questions about the city’s utility cost allocation model, and concluded, “I do not think you will be able to define the changes required without undertaking that work and making serious reorganization in City ranks.”
When Schulze released his report last month, recommending against the proposed management agreement with the KPUD to manage the city water utility, Buetow send an email to Sarah Blossom attaching the report, with the subject line: “What a surprise! ! !! Not!”
In addition to being vocal in her complaints about city staff and management, she undermined members of the UAC who disagreed with her views. She sent several emails complaining about fellow UAC member Randal Samstag. Samstag had voted with the UAC majority in 2011 in its recommendation that the water utility be retained by the city for 18 months, to give it time to become competitive with the Kitsap Public Utility District (KPUD). Buetow wrote the minority report on the recommendation.
In February of 2012 Samstag, an engineering consultant with sewer expertise, became the subject of a UAC dispute about a possible conflict of interest because of his firm’s interest in bidding on city work. Following the procedure set forth in the city’s Ethics Ordinance, Samstag disclosed the conflict and voluntarily recused himself from any vote on matters related to the conflict. Also in accordance with the Ethics Ordinance, the UAC voted that he need not recuse himself from discussions about sewer matters until the UAC took up the work his firm might bid on. Buetow nevertheless objected behind the scenes, describing to the four council members how she had discussed the matter with former councilman Bill Knobloch, saying, “No one else on the committee seems to think it’s a problem and I do.” She sent another email to Debbi Lester and Sarah Blossom, outlining various additional criticisms of Samstag, mostly related to his support of city staff.
In February of 2012, she sent a letter to Dave Ward and Sarah Blossom with a draft of an email (which was not sent) in which she blasted former UAC Chair Dan Mallove for berating her in meetings (disclosure: Mallove is my husband, and I was at one of the alleged “berating” meetings. For a time when he was the chair, he asked her at every meeting whether she had filed her conflict of interest disclosure form, required by the city’s Ethics Ordinance. Although she joined the UAC in 2009, she refused to file the form until mid-2012, saying that the ordinance required the filing of the form only upon appointment or re-appointment to the UAC. Since she didn’t file it upon appointment, she said she didn’t have to file it until she was re-appointed to the UAC. She finally filed the form in June of 2012, upon her re-appointment, and at that time she indicated she had no conflicts. Mallove and Buetow also disagreed over the way the UAC addressed the Samstag conflict of interest.)
In October of 2012, she lobbied against an applicant to the UAC because she thought UAC colleague Andy Maron—who had also voted for retaining the water utility—was in favor of the applicant. Maron, she wrote, was “pushing to get his buddy…another home rule advocate, non customer on the committee.” In another email, she suggested that the applicant would be “A Peter’s [sic] clone or at a minimum a back voice for Peter’s”–a reference to former councilman Barry Peters, who served on the UAC as an ex officio member, and advocated for keeping the city’s water utility. She even sent out a Kitsap Sun article about the death of Norm Wooldridge–a civic leader, former council person and home rule advocate–pointing out that the applicant was noted to have been a cycling buddy of Mr. Wooldridge.
In fact, Buetow worked to eliminate opposing points of view from the UAC. The UAC ordinance provides that the UAC must be made up of seven to nine members. Due to several resignations from the committee, membership dipped to five last fall. In October of 2012, Buetow argued in emails to the personal email addresses of Blossom, Ward and Bonkowski that the two vacancies should either be filled by two applicants who had been publicly vocal about their desire to outsource the water utility, or that the council should decline to fill the vacancies until the following June when, she wrote, the vacancies would be filled during the annual appointment period. In February of this year, Buetow proposed to Blossom that the UAC number be “bumped back” to five members “to limit the polarization we have experienced when we went up to a larger committee in the year gone by.” [emphasis supplied]
Open public meetings violations
The UAC ordinance requires that “Meetings shall be open to the public.” BIMC 2.33.060. Last week Interim city attorney Jim Haney confirmed that the UAC is subject to the state Open Public Meetings Act, pointing to the UAC ordinance requiring public meetings.
In a memo written in October of 2012, Buetow worried about the applicability of the OPMA, writing, “Should I be concerned? Do we need to discontinue any side meetings until we get another opinion?” Buetow’s October memo seems to indicate that a quorum of UAC members may have been meeting in violation of those laws, an issue about which Buetow had enough knowledge to become concerned. For more on the open government issues, and Mr. Haney’s advice on commissions and committees, read my article here.
BIMC 2.33.060 also requires that UAC minutes and records be kept: “The committee shall keep a record of its meetings, transactions, findings and determinations.” Nevertheless, under Buetow’s leadership, the UAC didn’t file any minutes since October of 2012 until last month, when Buetow submitted minutes of the June meeting at which Steven Bonkowski’s controversial reforms to the city’s water utility were reviewed. On several occasions during her tenure as chair, Buetow wrote emails complaining that the UAC had no staff support and therefore could not keep minutes. The ordinance, however, makes no exception for lack of staff support. In December of 2010, former city manager Brenda Bauer sent a memo to the city’s commissions and committees with notice that city budget cuts meant staff would no longer be provided. The memo advised that the groups would need to keep their own minutes, and would be responsible for forwarding them to the city for posting and records retention.
The minutes of the UAC’s December 7, 2010 meeting contain the following paragraph:
“Both Dan Mallove and Arlene Buetow expressed their desire to be elected co-chair of the committee. Chair Ward reminded the committee that because staff assistance would be drastically reduced in 2011, the vice-chair position would be responsible for more secretarial-in-nature duties such as note taking and agenda building.” Mallove was elected chair at that meeting, and Buetow, vice-chair. The UAC regularly filed minutes until Mallove resigned in March of 2012.
After Buetow took over as chair, minutes were seldom filed. No minutes at all were filed from October of 2012 until the June 17, 2013 supplementary meeting.
Judging from the emails that have been produced to me, Beutow is a prolific, behind-the-scenes emailer about city business. I have made a Public Records Act request for all records she has involving the conduct of the UAC. Though I’ve received various UAC work plans and meeting minutes, she has not, to my knowledge, produced any of her emails as yet.
Buetow is currently running for the Central Ward council position. Her character and ethics, her ability to work with others and listen to multiple points of view, and her suitability as council person on an already divided council should be viewed in light of her past conduct in government service on the UAC.
Many of the Buetow emails discussed in this article are linked in pdf format below. Note that some of the headers say the emails are from Sarah Blossom to Christine Brown, and are dated July 2, 2013. That header refers to the date when Ms. Blossom produced emails from her personal account to the city. For the original, dates, senders and recipients, scroll down to the forwarded emails themselves.
FW_ it has been a year already and so little progress-1
FW_ Background Information for 3_14 Council Meeting – Agenda Item 7.
Revised staff analysis-10 attachment-Water Management Proposals – 01082013-1
FW_ Conflict of interest concern_-1
FW_ I’m pissed _ can’t sleep-1
FW_ A Peter’s clone or at a minimum a back door voice for Peter’s_-1
FW_ misstatement about _recent_ applicants, to serve the UAC-11-1
OPMA Applies to Committees NOW-6-1
The format used by the city to provide public records on disc is not compatible with my system so these documents are hard to upload onto WordPress. Below are two key emails I copied and photographed, because I couldn’t get them into pdf. I will convert them as soon as I am able, so they are easier to read.
Fantastic job exposing the truth. The dealings over the public utility have been so shady and underhanded that everyone involved should resign their posts immediately.
Despite the storm and fury blowing through the last two posts, there are no significant revelations here, but rather already-familiar conclusions: UAC chair and city council candidate Arlene Buetow sends opinionated emails about how the city manages its water utility and who should serve on the UAC, she sends them to some councilmembers’ personal accounts but not others, and—like most people with aggressive opinions–she ticks people off like our city manager (unfortunate) and Althea’s husband (kind of funny). She also received some bad guidance from a former city attorney about (not) keeping minutes and didn’t have the good sense to ignore him. To paraphrase, but only slightly, she’s not one of us: too loud, too abrasive, too irreverent (and, subtext: on the wrong side of the utility issue).
Voters will decide whether they like Arlene Buetow in the fall. I’m trying to decide, this morning, if I like Althea Paulson. This blog has post after post that humiliates (or attempts to humiliate) a particular community member or councilperson, with the worst possible spin given to their motives and actions. These posts take a toll on people, which is justified, in my opinion, only if real wrongdoing is being exposed. It isn’t. I’m turning off my computer, again, feeling depressed about our current political discourse.
-Kim Hendrickson
Kim I wonder if you can find it in your heart to also worry about the city employees who have been harangued, humiliated or fired by the “community member or council person” you think I’ve treated so unfairly. Real people have lost jobs over this pattern of “opinionated” behavior from appointed and elected leaders. It has taken a huge toll at city hall. Or are city employees “not one of us”?
As to Buetow specifically–aside from real questions about whether she violated the law, there’s this: she has a demonstrated history of major conflict with people she doesn’t agree with. That’s a fundamental disqualifier from holding public office of any sort, in my book.
Agree with Kim. Arlene is advocating for ratepayers. She may be entirely wrong but enabling citizen advocacy is what participatory democracy is all about. City staff are well paid and withstanding heat to paraphrase chef Truman is part of the job. At least in this case the best don’t lack all conviction…..politics is a game of sharp elbows. Good policy finds a way out of the scrum.
The activities of Arlene Buetow are democratically questionable! She is on an ADVISORY committee in service to the council! There is nothing wrong with Arlene having an opinion but that opinion is a private matter. She has blurred the lines and worked very hard to push her private agenda from her position within the UAC. She doesn’t seem to care that she also breaks some state and city laws in doing so and continues with this private agenda push to this day. If she had conducted herself according to the city laws regarding her well defined role on the UAC and after becoming dissatisfied with how the ratepayers were being treated, resigned her UAC position to run an open campaign for council, with this agenda as one of her issues, then, if she was voted into a council position, she could pursue this agenda in public. Because of her behavior and tactics on the UAC (A volunteer position from which she was suggesting to specific council members to replace city staff members!) and defiance of the laws (avoiding even the appearance of “questionable” is the prudent position to take in these matters, as most public servants and professionals will advise), I do not trust her to hold any public office and will never vote for her. Ever.
Thank you Althea and Bob!
J. A. Young
Arlene is not merely advocating for the ratepayers. She and the council members she is lobbying display either a willful ignorance or are deliberately flouting the rules of both good governance and the sunshine laws. I don’t really believe that they continue to be willfully ignorant because of the many communications, meetings and governance manuals, etc., that they have all participated in. If I did believe they are still ignorant of the rules, then my only conclusion can be that they lack the rudimentary intelligence to adequately perform their duties. So, to put it bluntly, are they lying or stupid? In either case, the parties involved need to be voted out of office and certainly Arlene Buetow should not be voted into office.
The Wrecking Crew (Bonkowski, Blossom, Lester and Ward) are many things but they are not stupid. They have had a behind the scenes manipulative and destructive agenda since they took office. Their in council words and actions in addition to their off camera conversations and e-mails show not only contempt for this island’s city manager form of government but the state’s Open Public Meeting Act. Thanks to the diligence of Althea Paulson we also know that candidate Arlene Buetow is cut from the same cloth and would be an unfortunate and toxic addition to the city council. We need better, more responsible and honest citizens on our city council … and we need them now.
Bob Seaby
From Anonymous
I am so glad that Althea laid out how hard Arlene is fighting for the rate payers, doing her job and was a major person in helping the rate payers get a reduction of about 60% this year. And my god, how awful it is to email people that happen to agree with you. Is it then also illegal to call and meet people that agree with you? Maybe we can have an ombudsman for communication that can clear all these contacts between people so they can be approved beforehand (I think the Communists tried it)!
I am wondering if I would be equally impressed with results that Althea has accomplished for the community if we had copies of all emails she sent? Not keeping minutes was apparently based on an incorrect opinion by a city attorney and certainly not something Arlene came up with herself and benefited from. So relax, Althea and look at the resuts. Or are you actually in favor of some rate payers on the island paying higher water fees to support city staff and other island-wide expenses for all islanders and accumulating an unneccessary reserve of over $5 million at the expense of a higher rate for the rate payers if the city water district? How is this fair to these rate payers when there many other water districts on the island that DON’T pay these expenses? This is what Arlene was fighting against and she helped win.
The election between Wayne and Arlene is very simple. Vote for Wayne if you want to keep the status quo of bigger city staff but less roads/bicycle lanes; higher expenses on most city projects; higher utility fees for the city utility rate payers; only token improvement of the environment as exemplified by a draconian waterfront SMP plan with over 300 pages of extreme regulations but ignoring the real problem of stormwater, leaking septics/sewers and other sources of fecal coliform bacteria.
If you want effective management of the city budget to give the citizens maximum services for their money and if you really want Puget Sound and the environment cleaned up then vote for Arlene. It’s that simple.
This is going to come off a bit snarky, and I will apologize for that now, but…
The Emails:
There is nothing wrong with emailing friends who share your interests, but if your interests are divesting the water utility, and you sit on the Utility Advisory Committee, and your friends are elected officials who make the decisions with regards to the water utility, then you best play it safe and email them through their city addresses (because it’s the law).
It’s the water:
We have had too large of a reduction in our water usage rates and this was designed specifically to make the water utility unviable to pressure the city to divest it in the future when it faces insolvency. The only reason there is such a large reserve account associated with the utility today is that proper capital improvements have not been done for over a decade. 800 water mains break every day across the USA (that’s almost 300,000 annually!) meaning six breaks every year per water utility in the nation. In other words, a main break for every 913 water customers in the entire country. Now, if a water main were to break anywhere in downtown Winslow a million dollars in damage can happen in just a few minutes before the main is turned off.
We have cast iron and ductile iron pipes that date to prewar in Winslow. We also have outdated iron sewer pipes in Winslow (as witnessed by our recent shoreline sewer breaks). A water main break near one of these sewer lines could lead to something that would set the city back upwards of a $100 million if tuberculation infects the water supply.
If we do not do our due diligence with regards to maintenance of our water utility the worst case scenarios WILL happen.
Now, Arlene has been a terrible steward of our water utility focusing more on how to save me, the water customer, a whopping $3 a month (so that the utility will run a deficit from now on) instead of focusing on how to provide me with better, reliable service. Why is my water pressure 5 gallons a minute, and my neighbor’s is 1 gallon a minute? Neither of our homes’ pipes are corroded, so obviously it has to do with corrosion in the mains.
Also, if you are so mad about breaking sewer lines why do you think Arlene would have done anything to help? She is the head of the Utility Advisory Committee, her buddies have the council majority, and yet nothing has been done do reduce the odds of another shoreline break in the future!!!
On to the SMP:
You complain that the SMP is “draconian” and that is 300 pages. First, it’s not draconian, it does what the state asked it to do. Second, it might be 300 pages, but it is largely 300 pages of bullet points and I can read it in a hour. It doesn’t focus on storm water runoff because that is not what was required of it. The Shoreline Management Act focuses on the near shore environment since that is where bulkheads, docks, silt, landslides, and habitat loss (flora) occurs that has immediate effects upon the actual shoreline.
If you are actually serious about dealing with storm water runoff you should be prepared to extend sewer treatment to the entire island and cut a check for probably $50,000+ per homeowner to do it (probably closer to $100,000 per homeowner, but that is just being downright pessimistic) . Minimum it is going to cost $500,000,000 to deal with storm water in a way that will not allow urban runoff to reach the Sound untreated (but more realistically it is a billion dollar job). Which do you really want to pay for: a billion dollar island-wide sewer system; or a few new construction homes along the waterfront being set back another 25ft or so (unless they apply for a special use permit and/or perform some habitat mitigation, of course)?
Then again, Arlene lost big, so who cares, right?
Dear Anonymous,
You posted a comment to this article under the name “Anonymous.” It was a little sarcastic, but certainly within the bounds of my subjective standards for commenting on this blog. I prefer to have people post under their real names, because it’s hard to have a conversation when someone is hiding behind anonymity. But I do post anonymous comments. People can make their own judgments about the credibility of remarks from someone who won’t put their name on them.
Under ordinary circumstances I would post your comment, Anonymous—-if we weren’t in this important election, and I hadn’t decided a month ago that I’m going to devote my blog to promoting my choice in candidates. As I wrote on an October 9 post, “I’m not going to pretend that all candidates are equally qualified to lead our city or our schools. The differences are too stark and the stakes are too high.”
So I’m not going to publish it, because in it you campaign for Arlene Buetow who, in my opinion, the least qualified for public service of any of the six candidates running, because of her lack of character and sense of personal responsibiltiy.
Anonymous, you sound familiar. We probably know each other. That’s the thing about a small town. Rough political battles are personal and hard to get over. I wish our politics hadn’t come to the level of outrage and mud-slinging that they have. I’m not wild about having participated in that. But I don’t think it’s wise or fair for one side to approach a PAC-supported, partisan political campaign with hands tied behind their backs while the other is out swinging with accusatory ads, misleading mailers, robo-calls and the Trippwire in full throttle behind the T-PAC slate. So this month I have devoted my blog to the promotion of Val Tollefson, Wayne Roth and Roger Townsend.
My issues with Buetow are not, as you suggest, because of her position on the water utility rates. I was the first media source to print the Ratepayers Alliance press release after they filed suit against the city. I was as disgusted as anyone about the high rates that were charged to the water utility ratepayers, and covered it pretty extensively in 2009. To this day I believe that the Ratepayers Alliance lawsuit initially brought about important changes to the way the city managed the utility.
But there’s more to being a public servant than working your agenda. There’s the ability to be fair, to work with others, especially city staff without whom the city cannot function. A public servant must be scrupulous about learning and complying with the laws that apply to the job and listen honestly and respectfully to all, even those with whom one does not agree. Arlene does none of those things, and when questioned on her behavior, instead of taking responsibility, she blames others. She is divisive. She mismanaged the UAC. And she ignores the laws that apply to her as a member of a city committee.
You defend her lack of respect for open government laws, which are an important cornerstone of our state’s democracy. You may not think much of those laws as they apply to Arlene Buetow, but believe me when you run into a city official with whom you don’t agree, who does business in secret, and in violation of these laws, you will think differently about the importance of transparency and openness in our government. Our government officials must serve all of us, not just their cronies and supporters.
You have an outlet on the Trippwire, and I believe I have read things you wrote on that email listerv. Many of us wish we could reply to emails there, to correct gross misstatements or outright lies. But Tripp does not allow any opposing views. In my opinion that is not helpful to a community, for we are all better off trying to understand each other through dialogue.
As I said, I’ve made an exception on this blog for the election, though normally I publish nearly every comment I receive. Come back in two days, and let the dialogue begin.