May 4, 2023 Dena Jensen

The quote on this post was part of a brief comment given by our current Whatcom County Executive near the end of a March 15, 2023 discussion about adopting public comment guidelines for the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force (IPRTF) a couple of months ago. 

It turned out that the IPRTF did not use the Executive’s recommendation in the form of a restriction in the guidelines they ended up adopting, but rather in the form of an encouragement to community groups wishing to support the same position.  

I am including an email I sent the IPRTF today about the topic of their public comment guidelines which will explain the circumstances of the Task Force adopting these. 

As a brief intro, the Task Force had apparently never formed any guidelines previous to the meeting in April this year where they adopted them without discussion. After hardly any meetings in years where more than zero to one person had provided public comment – which is a rather alarming record when you think about what benefit from public input has been missed in all that time – in February, a whole 4 people showed up. In March, the IPRTF Steering Committee held a special meeting where a discussion of implementing public comment guidelines did occur. 

You can find the text of the public comment guidelines within the first few pages of the IPRTF’s meeting packet for April 17, 2033: https://www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/73901/Packet-IPR-Task-Force-April-17-2023

Here is my email:

Sent: Thursday, May 4, 2023, 08:37:47 AM PDT

Subject: Regarding your recent vote to establish public comment guidelines for your meetings

Dear Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force:

I wanted to comment on a few things regarding your April 17, 2023 vote adopting public comment period guidelines for your meetings. When the Task Force addressed the agenda item during the meeting, I was surprised the motion moved forward without discussion. Knowing that years at a time have gone by with virtually no public comment being given at IPRTF meetings, it was striking to me that this action was being taken just as people had begun to speak up at the last two or three meetings where comment was possible, at the end of 2022 through February 2023. 

I decided to check to see if there had been a discussion of the action regarding public comment guidelines during any subcommittee meetings following your February 27 meeting, which was the last one where people had been allowed to comment before April 17, due to their being 5 workshops between those dates. During the February 27 meeting, for the first time in a very long time, there was notably more than one person offering their comments. I found that the topic was listed on the agenda for the Steering Committee meeting date that had followed that February Task Force meeting, and I listened to that March 15, 2023 Special Steering Committee meeting discussion. 

I have been aware that a communications agency had started posting your meetings on social media in February of this year, so I understand that with that and with the Justice Project implementation plan quickly moving forward toward a potential tax measure, why the Task Force has reason to expect increased public participation, and as expressed in your March Steering Committee meeting, there is a desire to have rules to point to, since apparently you had not adopted any previously.

But what I wanted to say is that I think it is important for you all to reflect on how through these years leading up to another jail tax proposal, that until it became imminent that another tax proposal campaign would be upon voters in our community, there has not been any broad outreach to the public to simply attend the meetings. 

There are many factors that make it intimidating for people to speak up to all of you. In attending the meetings of Bellingham’s Immigration Advisory Board, I have gained an understanding of the threats felt by members of the immigrant community in simply being in proximity to law enforcement and justice system personnel. And this is just one particular community group that is disproportionately targeted by our laws and enforcement agencies. I know you know there are many others. 

Therefore it is critical that you continue to work hard to look at various aspects of your membership and practices to find ways to remove barriers to community participation. It was apparent from the Racial Equity Toolkit review of the Justice Project needs assessment process that there was a sense that much of leadership is at a loss for how to encourage and welcome people into spaces where they must be present in order for justice and an end to a reliance on incarceration as a means to safety comes to pass. 

I think one of the pathways to such participation lies in increasing even small actions like Maia Vanyo’s response to those providing public comment on February 27. I felt it was a great example of how all people, and especially those with lived experience, should be welcomed and encouraged for being brave enough and hopeful enough to come forward with their input. 

I know there were other welcoming comments which were valuable. But also, I want to remind you that often people who show up at your meetings may have no idea how government committees function and are organized and what information about them is publicly available. So if you refer people to your subcommittees, for example, people may have no idea where that information is, or be able to find it again after the first time they gain access. After years of slowly gaining a knowledge of where to look for information for which particular kinds of government boards, commissions, and committees I am seeking, I still sometimes encounter barriers to accessing information that is available but is posted in an area I am unfamiliar with. 

I also wanted to say I was very grateful for one of your member’s apology during the March Steering Committee meeting about their response to one of the commenters. I definitely understand it is very easy for any of us to respond in a defensive way to people saying something about items that are important to us which we believe are untrue. However, it is absolutely critical for our government agencies to be increasingly exposed to input from our community members who do have lived experience or perspectives that can shed more light on how to understand a problem or provide keys to solutions. Therefore, it provides an opportunity for healing and forward-movement to hear a community or government leader acknowledge a defensive response or one that was in error, thus granting hope that responses from those in positions of power will increasingly be those that seek to empower their community members and collaborate with them.

Lastly, I do not mind that your task force may encourage groups who might attend your meetings and that may have an established message they want to deliver, to pick a representative to deliver that message. However I wanted to offer my perspective, as a person who regularly listens and tries to be attentive to public comment at government meetings, I find that it is extremely rare, even during very long public comment sessions where dozens of people speak, that any of the community members will deliver the same public comment, even though they might be desiring the same outcome from the body they are addressing. It is why public comment is so valuable, because people usually have their own unique experiences, knowledge, and perspectives related to any issue they are choosing to speak about. To be successful in your mission, you actually do need them to have a sense that they have a seat at your table, whether or not it is feasible for them to be able to vote.

Thank you for any efforts you make to improve – and fruitfully bring your community members into – the process of preventing incarceration.

Sincerely, 

Dena Jensen

Birch Bay, WA

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This email was sent to the following addresses: To: jnixon@co.whatcom.wa.us <jnixon@co.whatcom.wa.us>

Cc: council@co.whatcom.wa.us <council@co.whatcom.wa.us>; ccmail@cob.org <ccmail@cob.org>; G. CC. Immigration Board <immigrationboard@cob.org>

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Here is the full text of one of the County Executive’s remarks during the March 15, 2023 IPRTF Special Steering Committee meeting:

“Very quick comment that – which may or may not be suitable here – is ask the groups, people who are talking the same thing about – that somebody has already talked about to refrain or – 

“Sometimes there are activist groups – because this is going to get a bit more attention than what you had before, so there could be some activist groups coming. Advise them that if you are ten people, you can all stand up and put your hand up and then let one person speak for you. I think that if we put this kind of restriction, we can help them and help us. We see this every time happening: ten people, fifteen people coming saying the same thing again and again and again.”