Commissioner Fred Messerle did his best to shield structure advisory committee co-chairs, Jon Barton and Al Pettit from public discussion last Tuesday when they hastily presented the committee report and then skedaddled out the door without hearing any public comment. The presentation was not listed on the agenda instead being brought before the commission as a late agenda item and Messerle further deflected questions and criticism by saying there wouldn’t be time for public comments.
Barton presented binders with a report available online and claims the conclusions are the consensus opinion of the committee. Unfortunately, much of the deliberations and any consensus reached occurred outside of public view, a clear violation of Oregon statutes. Further, Pettit tells the board that this report is the “employees talking to you” and if “ninety, eighty percent of the employees had said everything was hunky dory we wouldn’t be sitting here.” Presumably, Pettit means ninety percent of the twenty percent who answered the committee’s questionnaires but again we the public can’t know that because the committee has so far refused to release even the redacted completed responses.
The flip side of Pettit’s comment is that eighty percent of the county staff didn’t feel it necessary to fill out the questionnaires and maybe the twenty percent sampling isn’t a valid poll.
This video clip doesn’t include it but you can watch Cam Parry apologize to Barton and Pettit for the heat they took from the public during their “public service”. [Begins at 1:52:00] It is too bad that none of the commissioners thought it worth defending public employees when Pettit publicly accused public employees of being parasites, “living off the backs of others”. All we got from Parry and the board then were crickets.
A good grant writer can be worth their weight in gold however I have never heard of this husband and wife team
Al getting public dollars for his business seems minor compared to Cascadia Consulting Partnership getting $98,181 for three years, with an extra year option, for grant writing for the Egyptian Theatre Preservation Association. so they must have told Coos Bay city councilors that they would return millions for their $100,000 investment of tax payers dollars.
Well said dragon, what we are witnessing is a well acted but poorly orchestrated deceit by a couple of flim flam men
Mr Bouffant hairdo has never said spoken a word about the committees meetings law violations either. At least we know where he stands on transparency issues
I agree Dragon and Reminder.
And Al walked away with a chunk of your cash in the process.
Right in front of our noses.
THEY ARE the problem, they drove this county over the cliff, now they want more.
Jon Barton is shameless. He sucks off the system at every table. It’s obvious who is getting the slop bucket, and he ain’t gonna give it up easily. The man has absolutely no true sense of himself.
I had to look at that clip again and again to be sure I was really seeing and hearing that shocking, undisguised fraud taking place at a Coos Bay Board of Commissioners meeting.
That fact that there was no public notice given that the Structure Committee was going to make its “report” to the BOC is a violation of public meeting law, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Here it is verbatim:
Chairman Fred Messerle started it off by saying, “The Committee is going to officially present their report, which permits the Board, at that time, to take it under consideration in the future, and that’s exactly what we are going to do today. I can assure you that we will have ample opportunity in the future to discuss this matter in several venues.” Then he called on Jon Barton.
Barton said, “This is going to be so brief you wouldn’t believe it. We have presented each of you, now I have the findings and conclusions in a binder form, and what you have within the binder, is, it has been sort of sniffed as being opinion, is a consensus opinion of the Committee. It’s based on a substantial amount of experience in the public and private sectors, and as you go forward and digest and think about this and debate it, I think the Committee stands ready to assist in any way we can. We’re done. Unless Al has something he would like to add.”
Then Al Pettit lied about the report very nature of the report. He said, “The only thing I would add to that is, gentlemen this is the employees talking to you in this report. If 98% of the employees said that everything is hunky dory, we wouldn’t be sitting here. [snipped] But, this is the employees talking to you, so please don’t lose that fact.”
That was the end of the so-called “official presentation,” which was not presentation at all. There was no presentation. There was only contemptuous sham and deceit.
Poor curry county, Al seems especially focused on their impending bankruptcy, and that the same fate awaits us.
How many times is he going to bring this as his example of why coos county should follow his advice and hire a CEO/manager. Every time he’s been on camera or on this blog site, and at theworldlink, he brings up poor curry county, and our shared fate. repeating it kind of like I just did.
Its a talking point he has worn to the bone. Go fix their problems and get them to give your shop a face-lift, and then by the time you accomplish that task, we might think you have built some clout. If you don’t get a government position with this tactic, then Barton and the SCDC gang have failed you.
A great campaign toy would be the Al Pettit sock puppet
Great photo M. I’m puzzled as to where exactly Jon Barton’s right hand is????
(pssst. we already know)