The upset over proposed legislation that would strip the Vashon-Maury Island Community Council of its official status as an unincorporated area council masks a deeper issue. In order to be an effective organization, Vashon’s community council has to change.

The people who attend its meeting, staff its committees and serve on its board are, for the most part, thoughtful and well-intentioned.

And some of them are highly effective. Those Islanders who have joined forces under the auspices of the VMICC to address the ongoing plight with our ferry service have had a powerful voice both regionally and in the state Legislature. Another set of Islanders — a group working hard to address our outdated town plan — is also proceeding thoughtfully and well.

But the general membership meetings where 30 to 50 Islanders gather to vet an array of issues continue to get mired in process. Despite the skilled leadership of VMICC president Tim Johnson, the wrangling continues.

And perhaps most troubling, a divisiveness between the nine-member board and those members who routinely attend is often glaringly obvious. On vote after vote, the majority of the board leans one way, the majority of the members another.

Indeed, at this week’s meeting, members took issue with a letter the VMICC board sent to King County Executive Dow Constantine expressing “growing concern” about the process around his staff’s efforts to reconfigure the UACs. That letter, members noted Monday night, was sent without the members’ blessing and in violation of VMICC’s rules. A motion from the floor to rescind it passed. Now the board, at a time when its UAC status hangs in the balance, has to send another letter to Constantine saying, in effect, never mind.

There have been a lot of lofty comments lately about the  importance of the VMICC. And yet this is a group that struggles to find nine people to fill its board. It holds elections that have no controls; voting multiple times simply requires a desire to do so and a photocopy machine. Anyone who walks in the door can vote on the issues before it, even those who don’t even live here but are visiting friends.

If the VMICC wants to have standing in the halls of power, more than the blessing of King County government, it needs to address the dysfunction that now seems to permeate it. If it were able to do so, its official status would matter little, as it would be, unquestionably, the voice of the people on Vashon.