November 7, 2010, The day Kelly Emerson was elected Island County Commissioner,ex-Commissioner Homola drew the line in the sand, for her future relationship with Emerson with this, “A citizen who is seeking a paid public servant position while knowingly disregarding permitting requirements fails to acknowledge fiscal or civic responsibility. When that citizen then seeks retribution for their own malice, they compromise scarce tax payer resources and condone code violation,”
Price Johnson picked up Homola’s battle cry and at every opportunity they would attack Emerson with caustic words about Ken and Kelly Emersons legal problems with County Planning
Their attacks gained support from their fan club of citizens who picked up the chant of “pay your Fine Emerson and It’s time for Ms. Emerson to pay up, cease her private vendetta against her own county, and start acting like the government leader she was elected to be.”
In November of 2011 Homola and Price-Johnson reached a new low with their pretty vile personal attacks against Emerson when voting for the next Chair of the Island County Board of Commissioners
Their rudeness was not only an insult to Emerson, it was an insult and embarrassment to all Island County Citizens.
It was repeated again this year when Price-Johnson said she could not support Emerson for Chair of the Board.,
Price-Johnson and newly elected Commissioner Jill Johnson agreed that HPJ should remain Chair for another 3 months to give Emerson a chance to clear up her problems with Planning Department
They would then decide if Emerson had earned the right to be Chair of the Board
Emerson’s attorney in a letter to Island County Commissioners Jan 15, detailed for them the activities of the Planning Department and Bob Pederson to help Commissioner Emerson to comply with the other two Commissioners demand she must “clear up the planning Department situation”.
To read the letter, CLICK here>>>> View the letter sent to Island County from Romero Park P.S. to Island County Commissioners
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Maybe Jill’ll understand what’s been going on and step back from the quagmire spawned by Price-Johnson, Homola and Pederson. (for ex-commish John Dean) Listening to huckster Helen trying to spin herself out of the muck she perpetuated should be comical.
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HPJ has been in the email loop since day one. So it would be disingenuous of her to claim ignorance of the issue. It is all about politics. Also, I would like to see how IC Planning will try to spin the reasoning for why a neighbors construction project was approved and built even closer to the same phony dreamed up wetland than my own project. The Irony is, the same IC critical area “scientist” reviewed both permit applications and site, with two different outcomes during the same timeframe. Evidence is available.
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P-J IS disingenuous, IS ignorant and spins lies into her “Truths”, “concerns” and excuses like the liberal hula hoop she is. How do you spell mess? The one that Homola and Price Johnson created? C-O-R-R-U-P-T-I-O-N Corruption founded on bogus environmentalism, wetlands, gun control, garbage control, anti-development, non-prioritized spending, unnecessary tax bump-ups, and hatred of our Navy, all the time harping on Commissioner Emerson’s efforts to provide good government. It’s time for true justice to be served. A wise Commissioner Jill Johnson would be on the right side.
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Don’t you have depositions from court where the Counties “Scientist” admitted that there were not wetlands on your property? What was his name? Chris something?
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I am glad that you brought the depositions to my attention. The wetland “scientist” was Chris Leurkens and his deposition was very interesting, to say the least. You are right in that he did say that there is no wetland. By the way, I also have an extremely revealing deposition of Bob Pederson. I will go through them both in the next couple of days and ferret out the salient details and post them right here. I would post the whole thing but that would be hundreds of pages and they are not pdf’s either so it will take some work. I think everyone will get a real understanding of just how the planning department works (or doesn’t ) after reading them. Stay tuned as there will be a LOT of interesting stuff that wasn’t common knowledge.
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Ken, Wasn’t Chris Leurkens the biologist that was involved in a project to restore native westslope cutthroat trout on Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch in southwest Montana
That effort created quite a stir. The project was to restore 65+ miles of the Cherry Creek drainage for westslope cutts.
The angling public wasn’t exactly thrilled about a large scale (est. $500,000) restoration project on private land …
Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that fisheries biologists botched the application of pesticide in the creek (a Madison River tributary), and instead of eliminating only the non native fish it resulted in unintended elimination of the desired native cutthroat trout and all other fish in the river downstream from the project area
Turner was not happy
After his assignment as the Planning Department’s “wetland scientist & and enforcer” Leurkens was assigned responsibilities salmon recovery coordinator for Island County Public Health
If County’s Chris Luerkens, is the same Chris Luerkens, as in the Turner ranch fiasco then it’s obvious that he always delivers on his assignments and then some-
AND, isn’t that “salmon recovery coordinator” position in the Island County Public Health Department funded with tax dollars collected via the Clean Water Public Utility District
ex-Commissioner Homola and Commissioner Price-Johnson foisted on us as a Christmas present in 2010???
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Note: We just got another favorable peer review of our professionally prepared report. For now we will leave the individual anonymous just like the County and DOE “experts are.
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Hopefully our New commissioner will come to the realization that this was all about politics and had nothing to do with actual wetland violations.
This was a planned attack by John Dean, Angie Homola and one of our current sitting commissioners Helen Price Johnson waged before an election to have an issue against an opponent. The issue had been kept alive by Commissioner Angie Homola and Commissioner Helen Johnson to marginalize another sitting Island County Commissioner.
Island County staff and resources was used to wage this attack and the ensueing marginalization of Commissioner Emerson.
Our new Commissioner Jill Johnson has taken the path of sitting around the campfire singing kumbaya with Commissioner Helen Johnson when it was Helen that was a major participant in this political attack using county resources. It was Helen that voted for the raise for Bob Pederson just a short time ago but I would suspect that Helen will now throw Bob Pederson under the bus to cover her tracks.
Hopefully Jill will realize just how bad she has been played by Helen and realize that the game that is being played here is hardball not softball.
No one, including Commissioner Jill Johnson should be a party to using county resources politically as has been done with the case against the Emersons. Let’s hope she wakes up, smells the coffee and treats this as it needs to be treated.
By siding with Helen in the recent vote and delay in naming Commissioner Emerson as chair she has rewarded one of the perpetrators of this debacle by allowing the issue to continue.
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Spot on Cliff. It’ll be interesting to see if P-J now deems Pederson a useful, expendable idiot, or if she will leave it to Kelly and Jill to rectify the problem. My hope is that they will fire him rather than wait for him to resign at his convenience.
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Maybe it is time that we get a criminal investigation going on this.
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Well, you guys know me as a maverick whose ego writes checks my body can’t cash… so word to the wise: Sometimes I give ideas to see what happens. This is one of those times.
Why doesn’t Kelly “Wolfwoman” Emerson just chew off a nice Twix in her mouth like a cigar and just state that if not made Chair by 25 March 2013 she will resign. It would say a lot about her and force a crisis situation, drawing financial fire off of the US Navy from the progressive agitators trying to fundraise for a lawsuit at a time when our sailors need all the help they can get… and yeah, the cost of a special primary & special election would be enormous to Island County + Island County political donors. Time for brinksmanship?
Bottom line: It’s time to go big or go home peo-ple. If this issue of who’s chair is so important, GO FOR BROKE. “We’ll be going in broad daylight with nothing to hide behind. We’ll be easy targets up there, gentlemen, but they’re counting on us. Lean into it. Let’s go downtown! “
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Spoken like someone who has no dog in the fight and has nothing to lose, and who lives in Skagit County.
First time anyone has called Commissioner Kelly Emerson “Wolfwoman” Care to explain that, and also your tied-in bizarre reference to Twix and cigars in the same thought?
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Just a Top Gun reference or two…
I had to air the idea, it was stuck in my head for two days.
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Sometimes an AMRAAM is not the best strategy.
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Sure, I’ll holster that AIM-120 on my Growler.
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C’mon growling tiger. You’re suggesting Kelly dare to throw herself to the wolves when victory is in sight? There’s absolutely no reason, tactical or otherwise, Kelly should EVEN consider resigning. Her “problem” with Island County Planning, P-J, Pederson and Banks is a private citizen issue. Banks made it a county problem, when he offered county legal services to defend Commissioner Dean, Pederson and a couple planning department nothings who had exceeded their authority, against the property rights of Kelly and Ken Emerson’s citizen lawsuit against a phony, trumped up wetland report. As a legally elected county official, Kelly daily represents the citizens of Island County, not herself nor her husband. We elected her and we expect her to continue serving. P.J., Homola and their liberal friends and media have smeared Commission Emerson with spurious accusations for over two years. Suggest you cool your “we” jets, friend. Islanders don’t want a P-J and JJ combination picking a replacement either.
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I can understand that point of view…
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JOE, “….If this issue of who’s chair is so important, GO FOR BROKE.”
IMHO the Chair is just a side issue;
the goal is to knock HPJ off her royal pedestal and force her to act with only the rights of other commissioners.
Helen must accept the fact that other Commissioners are NOT subordinate to her
Her excelllency Queen Helen must be reduced in her mind to just Commissioner Helen Price-Johnson…her Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a personality disorder in which the individual is described as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, prestige and vanity . This condition affects one percent of the population and HPJ’s ego be damned-
YEAH.
I’m sick n tired of Hanoi Price-Johnson or whomever. I’m sure looking forward to her upcoming letter to Garrett Newkirk which is a public record and was mentioned at the last two Island County Commission Monday meetings.
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FWIW, Many of you know you cannot post links to Island politics when responding to Sound Publishings stories or letters to the Editor; you might lose your right to ever make comments on their Facebook stuff,
…But you can post that they, in this case, could do a GOOGLE search for
” Emerson’s Lawyer to Commissioners; Take Action ” and listed in the top 5 or so will be the link connecting them to this Island Politics article-
Bill, I do link to IslandPolitics.org as necessary.
Latest example: http://www.growlernoise.com/2013/01/sent-to-island-county-commission.html where I decided to give the Island County Commissioners a piece of my mind.
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