Members of a Haines Borough Assembly subcommittee tasked with hearing a citizen’s concerns about the formulation of meeting agendas called the man’s arguments and presentation “bullshit” and a waste of time Monday.
Mayor Jan Hill charged the assembly’s Government Affairs and Services committee with considering concerns voiced by Mike Denker that borough code conflicts with borough policy when it comes to how items get placed on assembly agendas.
Denker explained his issue and reasoning to the committee Monday. Committee member Mike Case criticized Denker’s presentation style and said Denker was wasting the committee’s time.
“I appreciate your enthusiasm here, but you have wasted our time a lot here by going into such small minutiae that nobody cares what you’re saying,” Case said. “Why don’t you take some time to study effective presentation? You don’t have to do it very long. You know, it’s just tell them what you’re going to tell them, give them three very convincing examples and tell them what you told them and then you convince people. Not going on and on and on and on.”
Committee member Diana Lapham echoed Case’s appreciation of Denker’s hard work and enthusiasm, but said she didn’t believe there was an issue.
At another point in the meeting, committee member George Campbell called one of Denker’s points “bullshit.”
“Mike, respectfully, bullshit. I gotta call bullshit on it,” Campbell said.
Denker said later he was “disappointed” by the response to his concerns.
“I felt the comments were red herrings thrown out to divert the discussion away from the issue on the table,” Denker said. “I attempted to present the committee with an argument supported by statutory interpretation and legal reasoning. It was frustrating to be unable to fully present the argument. To have the debate diverted away from the merits of the issue in this way is truly a shame.”
Mayor Hill attended the meeting as a member of the audience and did not intervene or address the assembly members’ comments. After the meeting, she did not respond to phone and email requests for comment on the assembly members’ behavior.
Former Mayor Stephanie Scott attended the meeting and sent an email to Hill Tuesday saying she would be “greatly relieved” if Hill issued an apology on behalf of the assembly.
“When a member of the assembly lectures a member of the public on his/her presentation and recommends training, and when a member of the assembly tells a member of the public that their position is ‘bullshit,’ we cannot assert, by any stretch of the imagination, that the conversation was representative of ‘civility,” Scott wrote to Hill.
“The assembly is the government. Monday night’s GAS committee, with four members of the assembly and the Mayor and manager in attendance, was not ‘just fine’ in tone. It is not ‘fine’ to shame anyone and surely that was the emotion that washed over the room when from the dais, the seat of power, a member of the public was told that his presentation was poorly delivered, that he needed training, and that it was ‘bullshit,’” Scott added.
Scott said Wednesday night she hadn’t heard back from Hill.