To the editor:

I was initially shocked when I saw the headlines about Councilwoman Rasham Nasser and ethics violations, but then I read the article and found out that this had nothing to do with ethics violations at all.

Instead, it had everything to do with city heavy handedness. Trent and Rasham failed to apply for a permit to do work on their well house. Are you kidding me? A well house requires a permit?

Our “tolerant and diverse” community builds a proverbial wall but making it absolutely impossible for working class people and real stewards of the land to use it. This has nothing to do with ethics, and has to do with a group of people who seem to not understand that farming is hard work requiring land use to make the most of it.

When something as simple as a well house requires permits, reviews and the like, then we no longer have a community. We have an exclusive and excluding compound, similar to a walled compound.

Walls do not have to be physical, they can come in other forms, and we seem have erected one. Owning property on this island used to be a blessing, but we’ve turned it into a curse because we have become a place where people want to put their nose into everyone else’s business, not because they have a legitimate concern about adverse externalities but because they have to be false crusaders or because they want an exclusive community.

I voted for Rasham Nasser because I saw in her the type of person we used to have on Bainbridge Island that we have long since lost: a down-to-earth person with a working farm, a growing family, and a desire to serve our city to preserve a rural character of simplicity, and simplicity is not quaint. Simplicity comes from hard work and real work that benefits the physical and social well-being of humanity. I’ll take Rasham Nasser over any lawyer or software developer any day of the week.

Seriously, these developments make me willing to defend Rasham Nasser to anyone and do whatever it takes to defend her. She is the kind of person we need on this island, who exposes just how suffocating we’ve become. I hope more people will as well.

FRANCIS JACOBSON

Bainbridge Island