COMPLIANCE CHARADE

September 23 letter to Blaine City Council:

It was good to see the mayor forced to surrender to public opinion against her for her power play two weeks prior, in which she interfered with the general election by defaming two candidates for Blaine City Council who opposed her February 12, 2024 elimination of free speech.

It was amusing to listen to the exchange between Councilman May and City Clerk Crawford about adding the phrase "subject to compliance with state and federal laws" to his motion for paper voting by council in order to avoid undue influence and intimidation by other council members, such as we witnessed numerous times by the disgraced former Councilman Mike Hill.

Violation of state and federal laws has never concerned Councilman May or the other council members enough to oppose direct and repeated violation of state and federal laws by Community Development director Alex Wenger, City Manager Mike Harmon, Councilman Hill, Commissioner Randhawa, or Councilwoman Bains' husband Gurdeep Bains in manipulating the Blaine Comprehensive Plan for their own financial interests. 

The city council can blame Wenger (the brains) and Harmon (the muscle) for habitually lying to the council about state and federal laws in order to violate them with impunity, but in the end the council went along with every unlawful land use scheme they came up with in cahoots with crooked developers and realtors, such as Sam Randhawa (agent at Freeman Real Estate). Only Councilman Lewis raised objections to self-dealing by Hill and Bains when he introduced a motion to adopt a Code of Ethics for Blaine officials. This is what caused the mayoral meltdown.

None of you has ever gone to bat for ethics or free speech or responsible development that protects the environment and public purse; only for rezones for developer friends that break all state and federal environmental protection laws. How's that for irony?

 
Jay Taber, Blaine Water Coalition

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