New Lake Wenatchee Fire commissioners take steps to improve transparency, access

LAKE WENATCHEE — The Lake Wenatchee Fire and Rescue commissioners are taking steps to strengthen governance and public transparency following scrutiny over the district’s finances and administration uncovered earlier this year.

On Aug. 20, the board held its first regular meeting with newly appointed commissioners Stuart McKee and Becky McMillian, who filled vacancies left by the resignations of former commissioners Mick Lamar and Mike Payne. The new commissioners discussed an upcoming open-government training, a potential conflict-of-interest policy and ways to make meetings more accessible to the public.

According to McKee, the board is partnering with the Washington State Office of the Attorney General for an Open Government “boot camp” on Oct. 1 in an effort to improve governance and transparency standards. McKee added that the event will be open to the public with other jurisdictions encouraged to attend.

McKee also proposed a conflict of interest policy due to the size of the district, suggesting further discussion and possible adoption at the next meeting. He noted that the policy was especially necessary for instances such as volunteer pay discussions, as both he and McMillian are also volunteers.

During the public comment period, a community member expressed continued frustration over the board’s communication, particularly with the lack of meeting discussion over financials and advertising meetings and agendas. The community member said the public deserved and demanded better during the previous meetings, and he wasn’t seeing a change.

The commissioners noted an ongoing challenge with sorting through disorganized financial data, but they were hopeful that continued efforts would lead to more information sharing and a standardized budgeting and review process. The communication complaint opened a discussion about ways in which meeting information could be more widely shared, such as potentially pinning a schedule to the district’s Facebook page.

In a similar vein, commissioners voted to change the regular meeting time from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. starting in September. The commissioners believe that the later time will make the meeting more accessible to the working public. The meeting date, every third Thursday of the month, will stay the same.

“I do understand that it does create extra work for personnel…But I feel like the most important thing is to make it available to the public,” said McMillian.

The board said it also planned to assign public-facing phone numbers to commissioners, using Google Voice as a low cost method.

Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media