In an attempt to restore public trust in the city\u2019s Planning Commission, the Juneau Assembly decided Monday to remove the commission\u2019s chair, Nicole Grewe. The decision came about three weeks after Grewe\u2019s fellow commissioner Bill Peters accused her of having an undisclosed conflict of interest at a commission meeting.<\/p>\n
City Attorney Amy Mead, who advises city officials on conflicts of interest, told the Assembly that she had met with Grewe about her potential conflict of interest and that \u201cpiece is closed.\u201d Still, the Assembly voted without objection to remove Grewe, whom several Assembly members said had damaged the reputation of the commission. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere was some real damage done,\u201d Assembly member Loren Jones said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure that this action repairs it, but I\u2019m not sure it can be repaired without this.\u201d<\/p>\n
The decision to remove Grewe wasn\u2019t made easily, at least in part because she was sitting in the back of the room.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is difficult; this goes against my belief that you praise in public and criticize in private,\u201d Assembly member Jerry Nankervis said before speaking in favor of removing Grewe. \u201cI think what we\u2019re getting to now is that the public trust and trust of the other commissioners has been broken, and it\u2019s up to us to try and remedy that as uncomfortable as that might be.\u201d<\/p>\n
During deliberation, several Assembly members, including Maria Gladziszewski, mentioned that the Assembly hasn\u2019t voted to remove a sitting board or commission members in quite some time. Gladziszewski, who spent 12 years on the Planning Commission and watched it for longer, said \u201cit certainly hasn\u2019t happened in my 15 years of watching the Planning Commission.\u201d<\/p>\n
City Clerk Laurie Sica and Deputy Clerk Beth McEwen, both of whom have been attending Assembly meetings since 2000, said Tuesday morning that the only Assembly-forced removals they\u2019d seen were due to attendance issues.<\/p>\n
Precedent aside, Assembly member Debbie White, who serves as liaison to the Planning Commission, said that the she and the Assembly had received several calls and complaints about Grewe after the Feb. 9 Planning Commission meeting at which she presided over an unruly public participation period. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople that apply for conditional use permits don\u2019t spend as much time talking as her husband spent talking,\u201d Nankervis said, referring to Todd Boris\u2019 25-minute testimony.<\/p>\n
Grewe declined to comment after the meeting. She was appointed to the Planning Commission in 2008, and she was reappointed in 2011 and 2014. Her term was set to expire in 2017. She had chaired the commission since January. <\/p>\n
Assembly member Kate Troll was absent Monday night.<\/p>\n
The Assembly also voted Monday to amend the city\u2019s traffic code to make driving with a cancelled, suspended or revoked license a misdemeanor offense rather than a non-criminal infraction. This was necessary in order to make city code match state law, which is important because it will now be easier to enforce, Mead said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an attempt to restore public trust in the city\u2019s Planning Commission, the Juneau Assembly decided Monday to remove the commission\u2019s chair, Nicole Grewe. The decision came about three weeks after Grewe\u2019s fellow commissioner Bill Peters accused her of having an undisclosed conflict of interest at a commission meeting. City Attorney Amy Mead, who advises […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15689"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}