SGGL Members!
We very much appreciate how patient and kind you have been these past couple of months. As Ken Stringer explained at the May membership meeting, we are operating with a skeleton crew at this point. The good news is because several members of the Board have chosen to run for office! However, that leaves us needing to reduce our efforts to a laser focus on 1) the upcoming election and getting good candidates on the City Council, and 2) continuing our watchdog efforts in the name of good governance of all the local governments that impact us here in our greater Sequim community.
The SGGL Board meets twice a month and we hold general membership meetings once a month on the last Thursday at 7 pm. At that meeting we share with you the discussions that have been held at the Board meetings. Some of it is strategic in nature and final decisions may not have been made in time for the general membership meeting. In the interest of transparency we are very excited to report the accomplishments of some definitive actions (what Dale has called a watershed meeting!)
First, we have decided to continue operating lean leading up to the election. As naturally occurs, the intense outpouring of emotion that followed the resignation of Charlie Bush has waned as people have had life to attend to. This has resulted in a waning of volunteers necessary to pursue ALL the goals we had initially envisioned. So any currently vacant Board positions will remain vacant leading up to the elections as we focus on the two goals listed above.
Second, we are, in the next week, forming a Political Action Committee (PAC) as a demonstration of good governance and being transparent in our efforts. There has been a significant amount of hours put into researching our initial formation and whether we needed a PAC, as well as other issues that all had to be sorted before we could move ahead with other actionable items.
Third, We will be implementing two donation buttons. One will be for SGGL for operating costs related to the operation of the C4 non-profit. These cover things like the Zoom account, bank account, officer liability insurance, and any activity promoting education on good governance. The second donation option will be for the SGGL PAC. These funds will go directly towards the endorsement and support of the slate of candidates we are endorsing for the Sequim City Council. We will not be donating directly to any of their campaigns but will provide links and encouraging people to donate directly to the candidate campaigns.
At the last membership meeting, we had decided who we would formally endorse but could not publicly state as much since we still needed to have these candidates accept our endorsement. We are pleased to announce that they have all accepted. The candidates are:
Rachel Anderson
Kathy Downer
Brandon Janisse
Vicki Lowe
Lowell Rathbun
Just a reminder that SGGL is non-partisan and seeks to bridge any political spectrum by endorsing those candidates who agree to serve under the values of good governance.
Lastly, we will be sending out a survey asking for members to indicate which candidates for whom they may wish to assist in campaigns and in what capacity. We will also be organizing candidate forums and reaching out to ask you for suggestions on potential questions.
So again, thank you for your patience and support. We hope you are as excited as we are about these announcements and our ability to really take the ball and start running. Once we get through the elections, we can regroup as a whole and decide how we as an entity should move forward.
Keep watching our blog for announcements!
SGGL Board
