The January 12, 2012 BOC meeting is available online and it worth watching a few minutes where commissioners Main and Messerle deny every communicating with structure committee member Al Pettit about closing the Coos County Solid Waste facility at Beaver Hill. [Begins at 1:39:00]Last December a complaint was filed with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission detailing several violations of public meetings law as well providing some information that indicates the commissioners may have been discussing the fate of solid waste outside of public view.

Committee member co-chair Al Pettit told a witness that the commissioners were “leaning toward turning it into a transfer station” and Pettit further indicated that Parry and Messerle were “working hard” on the project, however, this work is also not occurring with full knowledge and understanding of the public.

Further, Pettit in an attempt to persuade the witness to agree to converting the site to a transfer site for Waste Connections asked if this person would still oppose transferring the site if HE (Pettit) could guarantee that no one would lose their job. The witness answered, “Hell, no.”

The matter of the complaint arose after Randy Sanne spoke about enforcing an agreement with Waste Connections. Parry waited until Sanne sat down before angrily bringing up the allegations in the complaint. Parry and Main each insist that neither of them have ever spoken with Pettit about the facility or discussed solid waste amongst themselves outside of public view. Both repeat this claim again when I corrected a statement by county counsel [Begins at 2:05:00] and informed Parry that his anger should be directed to the appointee who made the statements spurring the complaint, not the complainants.

Since the commissioners deny “leaning toward” closing the facility either they are lying or Al Pettit was lying when he claimed he knew what they were planning to do. The dilemma for the public is to determine who is lying and why and what to do about it. In any event, this discrepancy coupled with the structure advisory committee’s closed deliberations and refusal to release public data casts even more doubt over the subjective findings that are to be presented at next Tuesday’s BOC meeting.