RECONFIRMATION OF CITY LIGHT SUPERINTENDENT

On Thursday, March 6, the Council, sitting as the Energy Committee, voted to deny reconfirmation for another four-year term for City Light Superintendent Gary Zarker. The vote was 4 (Compton, Conlin, Drago, Steinbrueck) to 3 (McIver, Pageler, Wills). Councilmembers Nicastro and Licata also indicated that they would oppose the reconfirmation when it came to a Full Council vote. On Friday, Mayor Nickels withdrew the request for reappointment, and announced that he would begin the process of searching for a new Superintendent.

This was a difficult and stressful decision, and one that Councilmembers made only after careful and thorough analysis. Deciding whether to retain a valued manager in public session is a painful process. It is a privilege to be a part of a Council that works seriously and methodically to address problems, and that is willing to make difficult choices in the public interest. This Council raised rates four times to keep City Light solvent during the energy crisis, and took the political heat for doing so. The Council conducted the reconfirmation process with dignity and care, and took no action to make the process political.

I came to this process with a unique perspective, having served as Co-Chair of a City Light Rate Advisory Committee, as a ratepayer advocate for 10 years as staff to the City Light Study Group, and as a committed supporter of conservation and renewable resources.

The City Council is sometimes talked of as the Board of Directors of the utility, but the analogy to corporate governance is inaccurate. In a corporate model, the CEO reports to the Board, which has the authority to hire, supervise, and fire. City Light's Superintendent reports to the Mayor, and the Council cannot hire and fire either the Superintendent or the Mayor. The confirmation process is our only opportunity to do a formal evaluation and make a decision on the direction of Seattle City Light. City Light belongs not to the Council or Mayor, but to all the people of Seattle. Our job in carrying out the reconfirmation process is not to point fingers, but to make a dispassionate and objective evaluation.

I don't expect a Superintendent to make no mistakes. I do expect a Superintendent to be committed to Seattle values, to be an effective manager, and to learn from mistakes and correct them. I don't share some of the criticisms of City Light. It is clear that external market manipulations caused the 2000-2001 energy crisis and consequent financial problems. City Light and the Council made reasonable decisions in attempting to cope with the situation, although not all decisions worked out as planned.

I also suggest that City Light's debt situation, while of concern, needs to be placed in context. The debt was incurred for necessary purposes, including some major investments in deteriorating generating plants, and is far exceeded by the value of City Light's assets. I further note that the decision to sell Centralia was thoughtfully considered by the utility and Council, and made so much sense at the time that it received virtually no public attention - the Seattle Times had one paragraph of news about it over the two year period in which the sale was considered. Current investments in conservation and renewable resources are cost-effective - even the highest priced resource acquired in recent years is below the cost of energy from the South Columbia Irrigation District, acquired under long-term contract in 1985.

However, there are several decisions that raise serious questions, notably:
1. Superintendent Zarker and City Light made a key error, which I as a citizen (prior to my election to Council) opposed, in failing to renew City Light's full requirements contract with the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) in 1995-96. If that contract had been in place in 2000-2001, BPA would have been required to make up power shortfalls, and we would have been much less vulnerable to the California crisis. It is that decision to go on the market rather than rely on BPA that exposed City Light to the fallout from California. The decision was fundamentally flawed, because it eroded the position of public power by signaling to the federal government that we were not prepared to fight for our stake in the long-term future of BPA, and thereby encouraged the drive for deregulation. For the last five years, Seattle City Light has been struggling to stem the deregulation tide, which it exacerbated with that decision.
2. After making this crucial error and entering into the power market for some of our core needs, City Light then failed to provide the kind of risk management that could have guarded us against some of the losses incurred as a result of the California crisis. Even after making the BPA decision, if loss limits and other protections were in place early enough, at least some of the consequences could have been averted.
3. While City Light has continued a strong energy conservation program, there have been serious questions about environmental stewardship. Two dozen environmentalists wrote to express concern over the diminished importance of environmental issues at City Light, exemplified by the failure to fill the position of Director of Environment and Safety for two years as a cost cutting measure (while at the same time creating new positions of Director of External Relations and Director of Public Relations).
4. As a past participant in citizen committees, and an advocate for strong public involvement, I have been concerned about City Light's growing insularity in recent years. The public participation program has weakened, with citizen committees given narrow mandates and short timelines, and a tendency to substitute public relations for public involvement.

City Light management has had the opportunity to acknowledge and rectify these mistakes in recent months, particularly since the completion of the audit report conducted by the Vantage Group, whose fundamental conclusion was that "…the current financial crisis is largely the result of SCL senior management's practices, including not providing decision makers sufficient information to make fully informed decisions." Regretfully, and partly as a result of foot dragging on the part of the Mayor's Office, there has not been much movement in a positive direction. I suggested that, if the Mayor was truly committed to change, one option might be to confirm for a one-year term to allow the Superintendent to demonstrate the ability to learn from these mistakes. However, Mayor Nickels rejected that suggestion.

Mr. Zarker has been a valuable and dedicated public servant, who has made many contributions to the City of Seattle. Some of my colleagues supported reconfirmation, based on these contributions and his good record on energy conservation and effective advocacy on regional and national energy issues. My conclusion was that Seattle deserves a City Light Superintendent that we can be enthusiastic for, not one that has had a balance of positive and negative results.

Our task is to be stewards of Seattle's public power, preserving our legacy from the past, building our legacy for the future. Business-as-usual is not enough. We need and expect excellence, and the test of whether we have excellence comes when we have challenging times.

Back to Contents

MONORAIL AND BOARD APPOINTMENTS

The Seattle Popular Monorail Authority (SPMA) continues to work on planning for the monorail. The City Council is in the process of identifying the actions that we will need to undertake in response to the SPMA, and creating a work plan and a schedule for completion. We expect to have a tentative work plan in place in the near future.

Our initial steps will be to develop an interlocal agreement defining the relationship between the City and the SPMA, to comment on the preferred route alternatives in the draft Environmental Impact Statement, and to complete our portion of the process for creating the new Board. We will begin work on the first two tasks in mid-March, and have already carried out the major portion of our action to create the new Board.

The new Board will consist of nine members. Two are nominated by the Mayor and confirmed by the interim Board, two nominated by the Council and confirmed by the interim Board, and five nominated by the interim Board and confirmed by the Council. Seven of these appointments have been completed. The outgoing Board has forwarded their final nomination to the Council, and the Council will take action on that nomination and our final nominee next week.

The Council has sought to nominate Board members who will bring experience in construction and transportation projects, and who are committed to scrutinize the project with great care and be careful stewards of both public funds and Seattle communities. We hoped to find candidates who are both supportive and willing to ask tough questions.

We were very pleased to have selected Paul Toliver, former director of Metro Transportation, as our first nominee. Mr. Toliver brings extensive experience and knowledge in implementing transportation systems and managing public works.

Members of the Council have agreed to nominate Rick Sundberg for our second position. Mr. Sundberg is the former Chair of Seattle's Design Commission, and brings the knowledge and perspective of a design professional that has been deeply engaged with the urban environment.

At one point, the Council considered nominating Jud Marquardt, a highly experienced and well-qualified Seattle architect. Mr. Marquardt had been active in the campaign against the monorail. While he is a person of high integrity, and made a commitment to be a supportive Board member, Councilmembers agreed that his previous opposition could raise questions, and might cause a divisive confirmation process. Fortunately, Rick Sundberg is also an excellent candidate, and does not raise the same kind of possible concerns.

Back to Contents

WAR IN IRAQ

As I write this, President Bush seems determined to initiate a war in Iraq, despite clear evidence that the inspections program is successful, that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered, and that most nations do not support this precipitate action. All nine members of the City Council have written to Congress expressing our opposition to this course.

If war comes, many of us will have loved ones and relations at risk. Our hearts go out to them, and our prayers and wishes for their safety. In Seattle, we will face increased concerns about possible terrorist actions, and fewer resources to fund education, public safety, and other important priorities. In Iraq and perhaps other areas of the Middle East, lives will be lost, homes destroyed, and cities and infrastructure damaged.

I encourage all of us to do what we can to avert this war, to urge the Security Council, the President, and Congress to continue to pursue the successful inspection program, and to work and pray for peace.

Back to Contents

QUOTE:
"No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future."

-- Ian Wilson

DEEP THOUGHT:
"Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them."

-- Laurence Peter

Citizen participation and engagement are critical for maintaining democracy -- fostering it is a key task of elected officials. It's my hope that this newsletter will inform you about issues, inspire you to get involved, and that together we can make things work better in this great city. Please send me your feedback, so we can keep things lively, interesting, and useful. And please forward it along to friends who might be interested.

Richard Conlin
Your Seattle City Councilmember

To subscribe to this list, send a message to: Majordomo@lists.speakeasy.org
In the body of the message, type: subscribe makingitwork
To unsubscribe, send a message to: Majordomo@lists.speakeasy.org
In the body of the message, type: unsubscribe makingitwork

Back to Contents

Back to MAKING IT WORK Newsletters