Butler's firing by county commission wrong decision

The Thurston County Commissioners recently fired Mr. Brent Butler as Resource Stewardship Director. In the past, Butler did an excellent job explaining complicated county rules and regulations. Butler is black, and attended Harvard University.

In public meetings, where Butler spoke on the issue of the gophers and the Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP), his Power Point presentations gave thorough, unbiased, and simple explanations that furthered the interests of Thurston County. The county has to resolve this “gopher issue,” but instead, the Commissioners have fired the man who is the point person for the county on this issue.

Thurston County is dragging its feet on this Habitat Conservation Plan issue, while they receive tons of grant money from the federal government on this issue. So now the Thurston County Commissioners have fired the man that was in charge of this process for the past 16 months. Now the County Commissioners will have to hire someone new. Now this new employee will take six to eight months to “get up to speed” to understand these complicated rules and regulations regarding the gopher and critical area issues.

The Thurston County Commissioners are not acting “in good faith.” They have lost the trust and respect of the community, of the people with property in this area who want to build a home, of the builders of this community who want some direction and some leadership to go forward to put this problem to bed.

This story was originally published October 17, 2017 at 3:55 PM with the headline "Butler's firing by county commission wrong decision."