Opinion: Peninsula Township Faces Financial Fire Sale – Who’s Really to Blame?

Editor’s Note: OMP resident Todd Anson has a few thoughts about the potential sale of Peninsula Township assets. Read on for his commentary. -jb

What should we make of the shocking revelation from Township Supervisor Maura Sanders that Peninsula Township’s unrestricted assets might need to be auctioned in a “Fire Sale” to pay the debts our Township leaders have sprung upon us? Well, it’s the first acknowledgment of the severity of the situation we’ve brought upon ourselves. So, that’s a start.

It’s certainly fair to say the situation is demanding extraordinary action on the part of the Township, right? Does this declaration not stand starkly juxtaposed next to the patience and lack of urgency to resolve the matter shown to date by Protect the Peninsula (PTP) in this mess it has precipitated?

Coincidentally, I looked to see — Mission Point Lighthouse is not a particularly marketable commodity these days, as ironically, there are too many lighthouses for sale.

Are we to continue to believe that the Township and PTP have this under control? Didn’t Mike Dettmer just share PTP’s perspective that there is nothing much to worry about (we have an appeal and we have malpractice claims, right?). Are we to continue to believe the wineries are the villains here for the dire straits we find ourselves in when our planners pushed them collectively so far they were finally forced to assert their legal rights? And the council and PTP still have many convinced that the wineries are the heavies??

Has this ill-advised “planning experiment in pushing limits” finally gone sour enough that we are sobering up a bit against PTP’s agenda? It’s hard to conclude we aren’t all being gaslit by PTP, from where I sit.

This is exactly what happens when common sense is parked in favor of the agenda of a few hard liners like PTP, especially when many of its membership are lawyers doing so at the expense of what I assume is the will of most of our neighbors.

I also assume that a majority of us see value in the open space that wineries and vineyards provide and want to support their sustainability, within reason. With time, we’ve seen a slow evolution from apples to cherries to grapes. All delicious and wonderful. Each had its day in the sun economically. Choke grape growing off and get what next? Marijuana farming? Housing?

For years it has been considered blissful in America to live in “wine country.” The myth here, neighbors, is that neither PTP nor the Township are (or can be) in control of any of this mess. We are “wrapped around the toxic axel” of litigation. Litigation controls you; you do not control litigation. It is a varsity sport not to be participated in by amateurs or the faint of heart. We, the Township are the amateurs. PTP’s spokesperson, Former U.S. Attorney Mike Dettmer, is a professional litigator. Likely, so, too, are many of his PTP colleagues. He and they have done a good job manipulating us into believing we are the victims here when the wineries won the lawsuit.

It’s fair for us as neighbors to ask, “Who’s agenda is being advanced here?” PTP’s or ours? Who elected PTP to any position?

Our township’s litigation is an ill-informed gamble we have all been dragged unwittingly into. I found a Will Rogers quote: “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.” So stop digging, PTP. I am concerned that PTP has seized control of the narrative here to the detriment of common sense.

Let’s be smart, not dogmatic. I don’t want to resent my neighbors because they are behind PTP and have created this mess, but for me, that will take PTP’s assuming some ownership of its role in creating this situation coupled with using its collective litigation talent constructively to resolve this mess on terms acceptable to us all (like zero dollars out of our pockets) as its Top Priority.

Certainly the appeal needs to be lodged, but it must be pursued with a clear intention of settling this mess at the lowest cost possible.

There are reasonable grounds upon which this mess should be resolved short of selling Mission Point Lighthouse to a B & B operator, the Township Hall to a marijuana farmer, and foregoing critical police, fire and EMT protection. As a matter of “common sense,” if nobody is talking about this, we have the wrong people engaged, right?

-Todd Anson, Old Mission Peninsula resident

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