Yachats still experiencing undue pain in its transition from former method of governance

To the editor:

This letter is in response to the recent article on the Visitor’s Center contract, but I also hope to address other recent history of the contract process in Yachats. It is clear to me that the ongoing transition from a village-volunteer culture to a professionally-managed system of administration for the city is causing undue pain and suffering.

As a psychologist, I believe our view of reality becomes our reality. What better proof of this could exist than the polarized and opposed views of reality we see demonstrated on the news each day? I wish to re-frame what has been happening in Yachats “for the past few years,” and hopefully thereby to reduce the hurtfulness, personal offense and malice which has been felt.

After Mayor Ron Brean decided finally to retire, there was a glaring deficit of the many skills he had brought with him as the former California State Director for Parks and Recreation. To replace these skills, the City Council at that time voted to change its form of governance to a professional city manager/mayor and council combination, rather than to continue expecting the mayor to handle all administrative functions, with only clerical support.

Years before, Mayor Sue Smith had made an even more significant change in the city functioning: she and the city council at that time (in the mid-2000’s) decided to convert some previously volunteer roles into paid positions. This early step in civic development from a village to a town birthed the process we see playing out today. Volunteers who had long been filling their roles became the “single source providers” for their newly paid contract positions, in what is termed a “personality-based” method of resource allocation. Typical of small groups, everyone just knows that a certain person and personality “is right” for the job. There aren’t many takers, and issues of fairness and objectivity don’t enter in.

Yachats back then still displayed a village culture, where most people knew each other. They shared a sense of responsibility to get things done. The relatively few residents were acutely aware of their mutual interdependence, and helped each other, even if they had conflict – which they clearly did. Nostalgia burnishes the collective memory of these times as an idyllic “myth of Yachats,” when everything was as it should be, and to which we could return, if only it weren’t for these “new” people and “their ways” of doing things. Blaming people is adhering to the old “personality-based” view.

The pain embedded in this nostalgic view is plainly printed in the Yachats News July 2 article on the visitor center contract. The complaints listed there include: 1) criticism of the city’s personnel action in the past few years; 2) terrible job in handling people who have done a lot around here; 3) coming from a big town and not knowing how to “do” a small town; and 4) a hope that there is a movement afoot to heal the wounds. This is the cry of a village culture in transition to a newly required “rules-based” method of resource allocation.

Larger and more complex groups require more complex approaches to govern them. Issues of fair competition — meaning fair recruitment, evaluation and selection — become paramount. Panels of representatives, scoring protocols, and shared decision-making all seem to obscure the individual worth of the applicants (particularly their historical roles and contributions). To someone used to being “known” in the old village culture, this approach feels like a betrayal. It is a betrayal of sorts – but of an approach, of a system of functioning, not of individual persons.

This is the year 2020, the target year for the planning document titled, “Yachats Area: An Active Vision to Create Community, Sept. 9, 1996.” It offers us an anchor in the historical reality of Yachats at that time, 24 years ago. In the first paragraph of that report, it states, “Very often there has been tension and hostility between community members, and projects that are needed and should have gone forward have not been able to do so, or did proceed only with substantial difficulty.” Further down that page it adds, “Nor was there adequate trust to allow people to work together and obtain agreement about the final outcome.”

My plea in this letter is the same as that concluded by the 1996 planning project consultants, “To every community there comes a time when it must become more than it has been in the past…. Sometimes change is thrust upon the residents by outside forces that are beyond local control…. In the best circumstance, people recognize the reality of the changes they face…and move together to address the adjustments needed…. That is what should be happening in Yachats, but is not – yet.” (p.11)

Why not? I will quote two principles I believe apply to us humans. The first is, “When people don’t get what they want, you find out who they really are.” Of course, we all can get angry – even vindictive — when we don’t get what we want. Anger is triggered when one’s self feels insulted, embarrassed, or betrayed.

The second principle is, “We believe what we believe because it allows us to do what we want to do.” If we can believe we were wronged, we can justify seeking vengeance. Is vengeance to be our new community currency? Is this how we really want to be? I think not. What would we do if we actually believed in the nostalgic myth of Yachats? How would we strive to influence its future?

Would we hide away in embittered enclaves, licking each other’s psychic wounds? Would we delight in attacks and roadblocks to the new decisions made by the new system? Would we do character assassinations to rid ourselves of the “new” people, so we could return to the “old” ways?

Or would we strive to be gracious enough to mentor new energies, and hope to guide them to the old (presumed) cooperative village values of mutuality and solidarity? What would we need to believe, in order to do that?

  — Fran Morse, Yachats