Submitted by Robbie Courts.

I am NOT voting for Beth Elliott for City Council in DuPont for the following reasons:

I think she is toxic to our city. She and her partner Judy Norris have sued the City of DuPont more than once and have repeatedly tied up the staff and City resources making large Freedom of Information requests.

She and her partner Judy, along with the FB page they run (Save our City) use bullying techniques to try to silence anyone who disagrees with them. Examples of this include blocking anyone (or verbally attacking them) who says anything on the Save Our City (and any other DuPont FB pages) FB page that challenges their opinions, or supports their opposing position; going to the offices of a state senator and the county executive and threatening them politically if they didn’t withdraw their endorsement of a candidate that they didn’t like; instigating hiring of private investigators to try to find negative info on candidates they oppose, encouraging others to harass candidates they don’t like, etc.

Beth misrepresents facts, giving false impressions, especially regarding zoning and land use. An example: Beth has made multiple comments during her campaign about stopping warehouses. The reality is that none of the currently available commercial land in DuPont (including around the Golf course/ Old Fort Lake) for development is zoned for warehouses….in fact, the previous administration worked hard to add more appropriate options, and further restricted sizes of buildings, so warehouses could not be built.

The warehouses at the end of Center Drive (Amazon, etc) were due to a zoning change (allowing that when it was not previously allowed) that was made around 2001, when Beth’s good friend Dennis Clark was the City Planner. Once a use is allowed, it cannot legally be taken off. The warehouses weren’t built until later due to the recession, but they were zoned that way back then.

Beth claims she got rid of trucks on Center Drive. The truth is that before Edmunds Village or Bell Hill had houses (before the early 2000’s, both were originally zoned for business tech areas), some Palisades residents (including Beth) petitioned to prohibit trucks going out south to Exit 118, although Center Drive was built to handle that and that was Northwest Landing/Weyhauser’s original intent)….so Edmunds Village and Bell Hill got all of the truck traffic. More recently, the previous mayor and city staff worked diligently with Amazon to build a bridge behind Amazon allowing for the trucks to go out of Wharf Road, and bypass Center Drive totally. Currently, there are rarely trucks on Center Drive, but Beth had nothing to do with that.

Beth doesn’t follow the “rules of her position”. While serving on the Planning Commission, she took info that was in a confidential and “brainstorming/draft” stage to an outside agency, misrepresenting herself as “officially from the City of DuPont” and asking for an assessment. The agency fortunately recognized this as inappropriate and reported her back to the City Staff, for which she was reprimanded. I have concerns about her ability to stay within her lane as a City Council member, if she were to be elected.

She is talking recently about suing the gravel mine for actions that they legally have the right to pursue. If she persists with this notion, the City of DuPont will more than likely end up in very expensive litigation that it will most likely lose.

In summary, Beth and her closest supporters have created and fostered a very hostile environment in DuPont. The use of threats and intimidation have become standard practice. Her election to City Council would both reward this behavior and put her in a position to pursue actions likely to cause great harm to the City of DuPont. This is not the environment that I want to live in, and I hope the citizens of DuPont are willing to vote for something better.

Source: The Suburban Times