We here at Terrebonne Sewer District took the opportunity to attend the Terrebonne Sanitary Distict’s monthly meeting Thursday, December 19 (via Zoom). Our goal was to get a better sense of how the meetings are conducted. We would like to remind our readers that anyone can attend these board meetings either in person or via Zoom. As per Oregon open meeting laws, everyone can attend and in most cases speak at open board meetings.

For information on where and when the meetings are held for the sanitary district please visit their website at TerrebonneSD.org.

Although board meetings of this type can at times be very boring, we did find the public comment section of this meeting to be very enlightening.
There was only one member of the public attending this meeting and he had quite a bit to say. After reviewing past meeting notes, we noted that this person has attended several past meetings and seems to speak at every meeting. We will not identify this person in this forum but his name does appear in past meeting notes.

It seems that this speaker has been submitting questions to the board for the last two meetings with no response from the board. Now, according to Oregon open meeting laws, boards are not required to answer any questions at their open meetings. This makes sense as a board meeting could quickly descend into chaos if endless questions are allowed.

The speaker noted the board’s own words and several proposed statements in their mission statement and vision.
At last month’s meeting, board member Guy Vernon said “If you have any question we are here to answer them”. We confirmed this from the recording of that meeting.

The speaker also pointed out two statements on the district’s proposed mission statement and vision that they were reviewing that afternoon.

#1 Transparency: “Maintaining open communication and accountability to our community”.

#2 Community Engagement: “Encouraging active participation and feedback”.

According to the speaker the board was not following through with what they said they are going to do or with what their mission statement says they will do. In fact the speaker feels he is being singled out for this type of unfair treatment as none of the questions have been answered. It should be noted that at no time did this speaker raise his voice or use bad language. In fact he was very calm and collected.

From our point of view it seems as though the board does not want to answer this person’s questions. Is it because they do not like the questions? Hard to say because at this point they do not seem to be answering questions.

Will will soon be sending our own questions to the board and see if they respond. We will keep you posted.