A recent meeting between the chair of the Renton Technical College trustees and the Chamber of Commerce board has left most business leaders still wondering why the board fired Don Bressler as the college’s president.

Don Jacobson, who chairs the chamber’s Board of Directors, had invited the trustee chair, Ronnie Behnke, and other trustees to attend the Sept. 17 meeting of the board.

Jacobson and other chamber board members wanted to know what new direction the trustees were going to take the college, the only reason the trustees gave in firing Bressler on Aug. 11.

As she has done since the 3-1 vote to oust Bressler, Behnke wouldn’t give reasons for Bressler’s firing, other than to say he was terminated for convenience. To say more could make the trustees legally liable for discussing a personnel matter, she said.

At one point in the meeting, she apologized for not being more “forthcoming” about the trustees’ reasoning.

“I am kind of caught between rock and a hard spot,” she said.

She also deferred explaining a new vision for the college until a new president is found.

What Behnke told the board wasn’t what it wanted to hear.

Her response, said board member John Galluzzo, “just doesn’t work for us.”

Galluzzo, as the chair of the chamber’s Business Development Committee,

has worked closely with Bressler. Bressler is also a member of the chamber Board of Directors and as such attended the board meeting last week.

“There is a lot of trust and a lot of bridges that need to be rebuilt,” Galluzzo said.

Behnke agreed.

“I plan to do that,” she said, which includes attending chamber board meetings.

That exchange came near the end of the meeting.

Jacobson pointed out to begin the session that the effort has already cost the college about $200,000. The trustees have hired an interim president, Steve Hanson, who retired after serving as president of Spokane Community College. The college is also paying the final year of Bressler’s contract, $148,000.

The costs will mount when the trustees hire an executive search team to find finalists for the job of permanent college president. It’s expected the new president will start work next July.

Hanson attended the board meeting, too. Spokane Community College’s technical programs are similar to those at RTC.

Bressler said he has known Hanson for a long time and they worked together. But, he said, “it’s hard to endorse your replacement.”

Jacobson called Bressler’s firing “a step backward, not forward.”

Behnke has been an RTC trustee for seven years. Behnke, who works in a machine shop for Boeing, is also a member of the Board of Commissioners of Fire District 40. Her fire district term expires this year. She is running unopposed for re-election.

She told the board she attended the chamber board meeting so the trustees can “better understand Renton and the business community.”

Behnke told the board that discussing a new vision or direction for the college is “a little premature,” because “we don’t have a new president in place.”

The executive-search team will start work in December. It will hold forums inside and outside the college to find out “what you would like to see in a new president,” she said.

Still, Jacobson told Behnke he would assume she would have an understanding of the vision today.

And, he pointed out to Behnke that “you are about seven years late in deciding to get involved in the community.”

In an interview, Bressler said the idea of taking the college in a different direction never came up in his discussions with the college trustees.

In recent years, Renton Technical College has been one of the top one or two colleges in the state in student job placement, Bressler said.

“That would be the direction I would hope they would still go,” he said.

Chamber President Bill Taylor reminded Behnke of a key partnership of five institutions in Renton, including Renton Technical College and the Chamber of Commerce, that help move Renton forward.

“We all work together,” he said.

Taylor has resigned from the college’s Advisory Panel because he says he has no confidence in the college’s leadership, as represented by Behnke.

“Ronnie Behnke has assumed control of that college,” Taylor said in an interview Tuesday.

Behnke, during last week’s chamber meeting, said the college is moving forward and “is doing great things.”

“We want to look to the future and see what other parts of the community we can involve,” she said.

Jacobson wondered about Behnke’s “sudden interest” in getting involved in the community. He wanted an explanation of why Bressler was criticized for getting too involved in the community.

Again, Behnke declined to discuss a personnel matter.

However, Randy Corman, a Renton City Council member who has followed the Bressler matter closely, especially with an eye toward the Open Meetings Act, has provided some answers on his Web site, randycorman.com.

Through a public records request, Corman obtained redacted portions of Bressler’s performance evaluation. Bressler had given the state permission to release those documents. Behnke told the chamber board she “had no clue” his evaluation was released.

Bressler has a long list of professional involvements, both on the statewide level in the community and technical college system and within the Renton community.

In the evaluation, the board indicated “it would like to know what benefits and outcomes the college gains through his involvement in these organizations.”

The board “was disappointed that Dr. Bressler did not expand his external relations to communities of color, especially in light of his last evaluation.”

Chamber board member and state legislator Marcie Maxwell told Behnke she has been involved in a number of efforts to hire top executives. What’s “absolutely important,” Maxwell said, is that a top official show involvement and leadership in the community.

“Don’t ever fault your leadership for doing that,” she told Behnke.

Jacobson served on the RTC board that hired Bressler nine years ago. He and another trustee, Jim Medzegian, flew to Green Bay, Wisc., in part to interview leaders there about Bressler’s community involvement, Bressler said in an interview.

Galluzzo seemed to best express the frustration the chamber board was feeling, along with the larger community, about Bressler’s firing.

Galluzzo and others in the room told Behnke the trustees owed those in the room and in the community an explanation for Bressler’s firing.

After Behnke left, Galluzzo said he doesn’t think the trustee chair “gets it.”

The college will be “in limbo” for two years, Jacobson said. “The leadership is not on that board,” he said. “They don’t understand the community.”

The board voted to voted to place Jay Leviton with the Renton School District in Bressler’s board position representing education. Bressler remains on the board, however.