An island attorney who was once president of the now-defunct Vashon-Maury Island Community Council hopes to revive it and is inviting the public for a conversation about how to make that happen.

David Vogel will host a meeting at 7 p.m. on Jan. 22 at McMurray Middle School, inside the multipurpose room. He first announced his intentions for the meeting in a commentary he penned for the Jan. 9 edition of The Beachcomber.

But in an extensive interview with the newspaper last week, Vogel opened about his reasons for trying to jump-start the council — also known as VMICC, which disbanded within the last decade — and what its purpose would be.

“(A community council is) very … appropriate for a place like the island, which is made up of very independent people who don’t like to be told what to do,” said Vogel, referring to the need for a council, “unless they believe that the people who are telling them to do something really understand what they’re doing and acting appropriately.”

Formed in 1976, the VMICC was a nonprofit board of community members that made decisions on a number of community issues — from bus service to zoning — while also acting as the island’s liaison to King County and providing a town hall forum for residents to sound off on issues important to them.

Years later, the VMICC came under the King County umbrella of six unincorporated areas councils, or UACs. The board was recognized as a quasi-governmental agency and was able to receive up to $10,000 in annual grants, according to numerous Beachcomber reports. That all changed beginning in January of 2012, when the county ended its contract with the VMICC and King County’s five other UACs.

Regardless, the VMICC carried on, but in a less formal fashion. Though it is not clear why the VMICC stopped meeting over the last few years, Vogel blames it on the county’s opinion the council should comply with the Public Records Act.

“Now, they had always complied with the Open Meetings Act — the council took it upon itself to be very open and transparent — but the necessity of providing public records calls for more support in terms of doing the paperwork and doing the copying and doing the record keeping than a volunteer organization should be required to do,” Vogel said.

Vogel hopes if the VMICC returns, it will be a nonprofit like it was before, which, he said, would exempt the body from the Public Records Act. The VMICC would focus on being a liaison to county officials on island needs, functioning less like governing body and more like “a very strong political action committee,” he said.

“Vashon, through its community council, has established itself as a community that knows how to communicate well with its elected officials,” Vogel said. “We’ve lost that ability by disbanding the community council … That’s so important if we want to get what we need — to have a strong voice and to be the squeaky wheel that gets oil.”

Though Vogel believes there aren’t enough meetings between islanders and the county, its government has tried to rectify that with the formation of the Department of Local Services, founded in January of 2019.

In a news release put out at the time, the county described this new department as one that serves as a “‘virtual city hall’ that helps better coordinate and deliver those services.” The department has sponsored town hall meetings on Vashon, but some community members believe there should be more of them.

Hiliary Emmer, an island activist who was once on the VMICC, said the island has “suffered” ever since the formation of the department.

“These town meetings the county holds once a year are a joke. It is their dog and pony show,” she wrote in an email to the newspaper, referring to a time she did not get her questions answered by a county official at one of the town halls.

Bong Sto. Domingo, community liaison with the Department of Local Services, told The Beachcomber in an email that his department is “supportive of any community-led initiative,” saying it works with similar councils in other unincorporated communities on a daily basis.

“Community-led councils make it easier for us to engage with stakeholders and more efficiently collaborate on issues that may be affecting residents of a community so they may be better served,” Sto. Domingo wrote.

Sto. Domingo said he would attend the Jan. 22 meeting at McMurray. Meanwhile, Vogel encouraged islanders to attend “with enthusiasm.”

“Bring anyone you know who might be interested,” he said. “We have a lot of resources on this island, a lot of people with great skills and those are the people that we want to be involved.”

“What we need to do is find out who wants to do the work and what rules and organizational format will be used,” Vogel said.

He is all but certain that the island will approve of a new VMICC.

“I fully anticipate we will have a community council — I do,” Vogel said. “It seems inevitable that the island will want to have another community council.”

Emmer said she, too, will attend the upcoming meeting.

“Yes, I have yearned for a community council,” Emmer wrote. “We always will have different opinions but the council had one goal ‘the betterment of the community.’ Yes, people see that differently, but for the most part we disagreed thoughtfully. We all knew each other and for the most part trusted each other.”