EWUA: A path forward | Column

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, March 11, 2026

By Tom Owens

Orcas Island

Eastsound Water’s ongoing turmoil is multifaceted, involving both tense board-membership interactions and instability in internal operations. While these two elements of the Association’s crisis are certainly intertwined, it is instructive to examine them separately to begin to visualize a path forward for the Association.

Board/membership interactions

Addressing critical member concerns is an essential responsibility of the board of directors. However, the sense that I have is that the board views the membership as adversaries.

The board is resistant to sharing information with the membership regarding new policies. Members at public meetings hear: “We don’t do that because we don’t have to,” citing the bylaws. The bylaws should be viewed as a minimally adequate operational guide. The board can do more; doing the right thing in interacting with the membership is crucial, given the strain that relationship has experienced in the last few years. Member concerns manifest as issues regarding lack of transparency in financial management, opaque decision-making and evidence that the board sanctioned, even participated, in aggressive treatment of staff since the staff unionized a year ago, leading to the loss of key staffers.

In the broadest context, the solution to closing the board-membership rift is for the board to actively work to view the Association’s members as partners and resources that can help return the Association to a true cooperative.

A starting place for resetting the board-membership relationship would be to have an unbiased, professional, external evaluation of the board. This would help the board work through any unproductive practices as well as serve as a way to clarify the membership’s expectations for the board and help create an action plan for better interactions among the board and with the membership. This is a common practice in the nonprofit world.

Internal leadership transition

I’ve argued that a leadership change at Eastsound Water is the cleanest way to move on from the many difficulties that the organization is facing. The policies and grievance processes that will go into force with the union contract cannot repair the relationship between management and staff. It only establishes necessary protections for the staff; the relationship will remain adversarial, and the grievance process will be regularly exercised. A continuing state of conflict, simply mitigated by workplace protections, is unacceptable. A leadership transition would restore an environment of mutual respect, an environment that includes essential workplace protections but in which the associated grievance processes are rarely needed as respectful interactions prevail.

While daunting, let’s assume that the board pursues a leadership change. What would the leadership transition look like?

Given that the turmoil at Eastsound Water encompasses all levels of the organization, it may be premature to search for a new, long-term general manager. A better approach would be to bring in an interim GM for 12-18 months to both run the day-to-day operations and to work with the board to implement specific goals identified by both the board and the membership. Restoration of the staff to operationally safe levels in an appropriate, respectful work environment is one primary goal. Returning the organization to a state that is stable, efficient, and responsive to the membership is another. At this point, the position would attract considerable interest for a long-term hire.

An ideal interim GM candidate would be an islander, perhaps recently retired or in a professional reset with no expectation or interest in long-term employment. This person would be aware of, but not embroiled in, the difficulties that the Association has faced over the past few years. It is unlikely the interim GM would have all the skills expected of the future permanent GM. Essential skills would include a history of respectful management of staff and interactions with stakeholders in an organization within a similarly complex operational environment. The two steps described here are indeed major, but are key to a path forward that is manageable with an outcome that the Eastsound Water Users Association membership, board and staff need and deserve.

See more here: https://www.islandssounder.com/opinion/a-thousand-days-of-chaos-column/.