On Wednesday, Feb. 22, the Friends of the San Juans held a public meeting at the Odd Fellows Hall in Eastsound. The meeting was held because of a YouTube video entitled “San Juan County regulations are not friendly towards small organic farmer.”

At the meeting, Friends’ Executive Director Stephanie Buffum Field stated she went to Charles Dalton’s farm on Orcas Island in response to a complaint about Dalton’s activities received from one of his neighbors — perhaps someone without the knowledge or courage to approach Dalton directly. Standing on or near the roadbed, Field took some photos and reported the matter to the county.

On its website, the Friends lists education among its activities. In this case, Field and/or other members of the Friends could easily have educated Dalton in a friendly, neighborly manner. They could have given him information about the Friends, describing the possible problems they’d discovered. They could have offered to help Dalton solve those problems with their help and/or by referring him to other people who could have guided him through the processes required to make his work conform to all applicable building and environmental laws and rules.

That would have been the neighborly and friendly thing to do as a part of our community. Those acts might even have convinced Dalton to become a contributor and/or member of the Friends organization and encouraged him to make his farm be a showplace for their efforts.

The vast majority of speakers at the Friends’ meeting were critical of the manner in which the Friends brought our county bureaucracy into the alleged problems discovered on Dalton’s farm. Instead of acting as part of our community, the Friends became a vigilante organization and committed a most unfriendly and unneighborly act. By going to the county, the Friends tried to make Dalton into a criminal, liable for expensive fines.

It’s time for the Friends to figure out who they are. Do they want to be a part of our community, working together with the rest of us to keep our islands as beautiful as we all want them to be? Or do they want to become “they” or “them” versus the majority “we” and “us?” In other words, do they want to remain the “Friends of the San Juans” or are they ready to change their organization’s name to “Enemies of the San Juans?”

J B McGuire

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