By way of a timeline, members of the structure advisory committee published a DRAFT report on the county website on November 29 and then made several statements to the paper and followed up with a presentation at a luncheon. According to a letter in The Sentinel, Pettit claims that a unanimous vote to adopt the draft report was held on December 19 and if you go to Coos Media Central at around 40 minutes three separate motions are proposed and agreed to by the committee but if you watch the votes and the subsequent discussion afterward, you will see why the matter does not appear to be resolved and why Sheriff Zanni tells me that he believed they were voting to accept the November 29 draft, never previously voted upon and published without committee consent, for further discussion and debate. Amongst other anomalies, co-chair Jon Barton says the report is “subject to” some additions to come at a later date, therefore no final document is available to vote upon.

Typically, when a motion is made and a vote is taken there is an announcement that the motion carries or fails. There was no such acknowledgment during these “votes” and the members were never polled. The ensuing discussion, after the so-called vote, indicates that the matter of hiring an administrator is yet to be resolved and since this vote occurred almost three weeks after the draft was published and no final product was presented for a public vote before the FINAL was available on the website in January Pettit’s claim of a unanimous decision and a proper public vote is misleading.

The meetings are themselves so disorganized that even Pettit is confused. For example, when Pettit gave his power point presentation to the commissioners recently he claimed that a unanimous vote had taken place on November 9, while in his letter he says the vote was on December 19. He also claims that all members were present on December 19, however, Laird Bryan was absent. Pettit is all over the map as usual and should have left the committee voluntarily when he let it be known he considers public employees to be parasites.

UPDATE: A reader reminded me that when Pettit presented the power point he claimed that only one page had been changed from the December 7 meeting. This is false, several slides were omitted referring to bankruptcy, quotes from the Curry County sheriff and Curry County. During the December 19 meeting one of the motions put forward was to approve the December 7 power point for the presentation to the commissioners. Apparently, Pettit made a unilateral decision to alter that presentation to the commission violating the committee “consensus”.