A former director of Bolinas Public Utility District has charged that the BPUD board violated state open-meeting laws last month when directors signed an agreement aimed at closing West Marin Sanitary Landfill.
Paul Kayfetz said he planned to question BPUD directors on the matter at last week's BPUD meeting, but the meeting dragged on and he got tired of waiting. He said he'll press the issue in January.
The agreement - which was signed also by the landfill owners, Stinson Beach Water District directors, the county Board of Supervisors, and Shoreline Disposal - allowed Shoreline to raise its garbage-pickup rates throughout West Marin.
The Shoreline increase was in response to the landfill raising its dumping prices in October to pay for state-mandated tests and environmental cleanup.
Kayfetz for the past two years has fiercely opposed asking Bolinas residents to shoulder any more of the landfill's financial burden. He argued at BPUD's October meeting that signing the pact could put the district partially at risk for costs associated with the dump's ultimate closure, which is scheduled for next fall.
At that meeting, Kayfetz' noted this week, BPUD directors agreed to delay voting on the pact until December, after they had had a chance to seek legal advice and compare dumping prices at Redwood Landfill in Novato.
Kayfetz said this week that he was out of town on business the night of the November meeting, but had read the meeting's agenda before he left, and the agenda made no mention that a vote on the agreement would be taken.
Under the state's Brown Act, special districts and government agencies must issue public agendas adequately describing a topic to be discussed.
The agenda "didn't say anything about acting on the county agreement," Kayfetz said. "I was quite misled by the agenda item. I had wanted to be there to give input."
Attorney Siedman, Kayfetz noted, represented the West Marin Coalition two years ago in that group's lawsuit to compel the county to act on the dump's ill-fated expansion plans.
Kayfetz said Siedman had abstained on BPUD votes pertaining to the dump in the past, but in November he provided the deciding vote on raising rates.
For his part, Siedman said Kayfetz is "absolutely wrong" when he said he's abstained from dump issues in the past. Siedman said the only time he didn't vote was when the West Marin Coalition asked BPUD to join in opposition to the dump's proposed expansion.
"I think [Kayfetz' charges are] just harassment," Siedman said. "He just makes stuff up. It gets a little much. He's always throwing mud on something."
ply" with the law.
Countered Kayfetz, "If you want an opinion telling you what you want to hear, rather than what need to know, you go to the County Council."
Kayfetz said Hendricks' opinion is in conflict itself because the county had a financial interest in a BPUD signature on the agreement. He called Hendricks "a prostitute" whose job is simply to justify the actions of the Board of Supervisors.