SEQUIM — Both sides of Sequim’s civil war have won.
More than 150 members of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce gathered Thursday evening in the Guy Cole Convention Center, in hopes of settling the months-long dispute over who should serve on the chamber’s board of directors.
At the front of the hall, sat the interim board, which includes Hattie Dixon, Ron Gilles and Annette Hanson, members who voted to fire chamber executive director Lee Lawrence on Jan. 18.
Seated in the audience were members of the Concerned Chamber Committee or CCC, a coalition that formed in late January to demand more information about Lawrence’s dismissal and greater responsiveness from the chamber board.
The two groups together called Thursday’s meeting so that all chamber members could vote on whether to oust the interim board and then bring in an entirely new 12-member board via a special election.
Interim board president Walt Schubert ran the meeting, and started with an election to amend the chamber bylaws, to permit the removal of board members by a two-thirds majority vote among chamber members.
The meeting’s attendees voted 133 to 20 for that amendment, paving the way for a radical change in chamber leadership — but that didn’t quite happen.
Robin Ferre, a member of the CCC, stood up to make a motion for removal of interim board members Dixon, Hanson, Gilles, Mike McAleer and Deborah Rambo Sinn.
Then Esther Nelson, a veteran chamber volunteer, stood up.
“I wonder if you all realize,” she said, “that these people you’re trying to remove are trying to help you.”
The board members are volunteers, Nelson added, and “they’re good people.”
Chamber member Darcy Lamb asked: “What have these people done to bring us all here?”
It’s what they haven’t done, answered Ron Ferre, another CCC member.
The chamber hasn’t been audited in several years, and it didn’t give sufficient information about Lawrence’s firing.
