Letting Go

I'm working at letting go of the Fire Commissioner to-do.  The comments on the APB article are too emotional to be of much interest to read and too many of them are anonymous.  It's not clear to me why people would choose to produce a view or conclusion or whatever and then fail to attach their names to it.  Talk about not having the power of your convictions.  I understand it can be scarey to sign it.  But then, you don't have to write it in the first place.

Anyway, the discussion isn't particularly helpful, but even more important, the more I think about it, the less I see any way forward other than grinning and bearing it.  The Commissioners seem to have no rule but their own will except at elections.  They make decisions without allowing anyone to speak to them.  I still don't get how Carleton got appointed: they make motions, and then there's never any time for questions/discussion from the public, and they don't seem to vote, either.  It is as if they have amended Roberts Rules of Order such that if there are only two people on board, then when one makes a motion and the other seconds it: well, that's the vote.

But even if they have, there's nothing the public can do about it.  If they were appointing their cats or dogs the next fire chief, (as, you will recall, Caligula appointed his horse to be a Roman Senator), apparently there's nothing we can do about it except wait for the next election.  We can keep going to the meetings to bear witness, of course, and I will try to do that.  But I surely don't see how WE, the public, are going to have any say in who is appointed to succeed Gellatly.  Mr. Meursing seemed to suggest Wednesday night that he and Mr. Riffle would make that decision.  Back in 2003, when two commissioners resigned, the County Council seems to have appointed Gellatly to join Meursing, but I don't know how the third Commissioner got appointed or elected since there had just been an election at the time of the double resignation.

So, farewell to the Commissioners with respect to allowing them much file space in my brain.  I don't think it's likely to go well because I think they've poisoned the water.  But it's Point Roberts, I remind myself.  That is to say, it is much like the moment at the end of the movie, "Chinatown" when the police tell Jake (Jack Nicholson)  "Forget it, Jake: it's Chinatown."