So, they finally did it.
After years and years of on-again, off-again relations, quiet grumbling and likely more than a few private fantasies of more financially profitable partnerships, Port of Coupeville commissioners this week unexpectedly and pointedly cut ties with the Greenbank Farm Management Group. Despite being in ongoing negotiations for a new contract that would have started next year, and making a clearly unpopular decision before what was the largest crowd to attend a port meeting in recent memory, the board effectively said, “Nope, we’re done. Thanks, but adios.”
While the basis for the 2-1 vote is understandable — to some, the dividends of decades of investment amount to little more than crushed hopes for an economic engine that simply never was — this is indeed a sorry conclusion to a nearly 20-year relationship. To say it was poorly executed is an understatement. Rather, it smacks of blunder: a rash decision with no promise for success and an affront to the businesses and people who have helped carry the farm through some tough years.
Commissioner Marshall Bronson and Commissioner John Carr, Bronson’s handpicked colleague who was appointed earlier this year without seeking resumes from the public, no doubt have thought about the relationship with the management group and the farm’s fate for some time. Their duty as port commissioners, a junior taxing district that exists largely to foster economic development, is to look at ways to best utilize the public’s dime. They are supposed to divorce sentiment from facts, but unfortunately the reality remains as cloudy as Carr’s appointment.
The management group’s contract is up at the end of the year, and the board’s plan for succession is a mystery. Five months is a tight timeline for coming up with a new plan or group. Of course there has been much discussion in recent weeks about some kind of relationship with Washington State University, but leaders at WSU and the port have been quick to soothe what’s amounted to community panic with promises of “Nothing has happened or decided, we’re just talking.”
Perhaps that remains true, but this week that seems highly suspect. Indeed, trust in port commissioners has reached a new low.
Furthermore, that the board would make such a surprise decision while the management group was operating on good faith that a new agreement was on the verge of being hammered out is beyond bad form — it’s just plain rude. That neither Bronson or Carr are running for reelection only adds insult to injury.
While it’s true the farm has been an expensive experiment for the port and never been the bosom of industry that some have hoped, this appears to be a rash decision that smacks of disrespect and behind the scenes maneuvering unbecoming of elected office.
