1. Name as it will appear on the ballot
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2. Office sought (include office, jurisdiction, position/district number):
3. Are you the incumbent? No
4. How long have you resided in this district/city?
5. How long have you
resided in
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1970 to 1991 and 1997 to present |
6. Is the office sought partisan or nonpartisan? Nonpartisan
CAMPAIGN CONTACTS
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1. Beginning with the most recent position, please list public offices which you have held. Include positions on appointive Boards or Commissions.
Public Office |
Elective or Appointive? |
Dates Held |
Leadership Role (if any) |
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Elevated Transportation Company
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2. If you ran for public office but were not elected, please list those races below:
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In this section, we are seeking responses that reflect the four ratings criteria: involvement, effectiveness, character, and knowledge. These are defined as follows:
1. In a page or less, why are you running for this office? (Note: the interview committee will be given a copy of this statement before your interview; at the beginning of your interview you will have the opportunity to expand on this statement in any way you wish.)
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I believe that the
Specifically:
1. The Port raised its property tax levy last fall to $58 million annually. That is enough money to support hundreds of new teachers or thousands of transit hours. And, in this case, that $58 million is subsidizing hundreds of acres of empty docks.
Most big ports on the West Coast earn a net profit for their
communities. Vancouver (B.C.) and its tenants, instead of collecting taxes,
pay $55 million (Cdn) to the municipalities in which the port is located.
Admittedly, it will not be able to eliminate the levy overnight. The port has over $2 billion in debt, loses $20 million each year in the Seaport Division, and is relying on two problematic terminal leases. But it can set the elimination of the levy as a goal.
2. The Port of Seattle needs to return to its core mission and support trade, maritime and industrial jobs. Instead, it has turned its back on those jobs, or in some cases made inept efforts to retain them, and begun to focus on real estate development. Rather than planning for new condos, the port needs to become an advocate for the industriasl and maritime sectors.
The activity related to trade, maritime activity, and industry is not dying. It remains, and can remain, an important part of the ecomic diversity that we need in our community. In its preoccupation with development, the port has neglected those sectors in hundreds of small ways, and forced some businesses to move elsewhere.
3. The port needs to be involved in the big environmental issues that affect its operations.
The big West Coast ports, along with labor and industry, have been involved in an intense effort to deal with air quality and ballast water issues related to maritime trade. But while, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Vancouver have been working on solutions - solutions that will resolve the environmental threats but keep the jobs - the Port of Seattle has been entirely absent from those discussion. The port needs to join their tenants and workers in determining how to apply the emerging environmental solutions to activity in Seattle. |
2. Describe your most important personal characteristics or traits as they relate to the office you seek.
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In this race I believe that my most important personal characteristic is my experience in port finance, maritime trade, and the maritime environment.
But I also have patience, and good skills working with people. I can disagree with others and still respect them, and argue without feeling that I am involved in a personal confrontation. Those skills will be particularly important on the five-person port commission, where I expect to arrive as an unwelcome outsider, and will need time and humility to build alliances.
At the same time, I am stubborn in pursuit of what I believe to be right. One of the difficulties with part-time, unpaid commissions is that they can easily be overwhelmed by staff expertise and staff pressure. It takes a good deal of expertise and fortitude to retain an independent perspective in those circumstances, and I believe I have both. |
3. Please describe in sufficient detail, one to three accomplishments or contributions of which you are most proud. These examples should illustrate effective skills and capabilities you think apply to the office you are seeking. These accomplishments may have occurred at any time in your personal, professional, or public life.
4. Please list or describe your current and past activities in the community in which you have acquired skills that relate to the office you seek. Include your role in the activity and the year(s) in which you were involved. Involvement consists of many areas such as family, neighborhood, community, employment, or public life.
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There are three specific activites that have given me unique background for the Seattle Port Commission:
1. As an investment banker, I worked with a number of ports in the Northwest on various types of debt financing. One of my clients was the Port of Seattle, and I arranged the back-up line of credit for the port's first commercial paper issue. I am very familiar with port finances, both on the dock side as well as the airport side, and feel comfortable with complex income statements and balance sheets for agencies that have both public and private revenue sources.
2. For ten years I was the publisher of Marine Digest and Transportation News, a trade magazine that covered West Coast ports and shipping. I traveled up and down the West Coast regularly, meeting with ports, steamship lines, and labor organizations. That experience left me very familiar with the operations of all of the large ports on the West Coast.
3. While I was at Marine Digest, I also edited the Marine Regulatory Bulletin - a newsletter that covered technical aspects of martime environmental issues. The Bulletin dealt with oil spill prevention, air quality issues, and the various options being considered for controlling ballast water. In the process of preparing that newsletter I became very familiar with those issues and the individuals working on them both regionally and nationally.
I belive that my work in these three areas has left me with a unique depth of experience that will allow me to maintain and independent perspective on operations at the Port of Seattle.
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The most important responsibility of a port commissioner is to oversee the broad direction of the agency. The budget is the easiest tool for defining that broad direction, since the budget defines the real priorities of the organization. So the commissioners' first priority is to agree on the broad direction and ensure that it is enforced in the budget.
Second, a commissioner has to serve as a reality check for the agency and raise concerns over the larger issues that show up. If you run a port and have hundreds of acres of vacant docks, that suggests a problem. If customers complain about lack of communication, that could be a sign of a problem also. If environmental issues that affect how you operate are being addressed by your customers and competitors, maybe you should be involved in that process as well.
If all the large ports on the West Coast are doing things one way, and the Port of Seattle is not, that is a legitimate topic for a commissioner to raise. It is easy for an agency like the Port of Seattle to lose sight of where it is headed, and it is the job of the commissioners to keep it on track, and to evaluate successes and failures in light of the agency's overall mission. |
EDUCATION BACKGROUND SUMMARY
The Municipal League’s Candidate Evaluation Report is distributed to voters in print and/or on our website. It includes a summary of the candidate’s education. Please summarize your education in 120 characters (letters, punctuation, and space all combined). The League will delete material that exceeds the space limit by beginning with the last entry. Suggested order is (degree) (subject) (school) (year, if desired).
Note: If this question is left blank the League will not include education information in your candidate profile.
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BA - History - Yale University 1971 Masters in Public Administration - Kennedy School at Harvard University 1980 |
FOR PUBLICATION IN CANDIDATE EVALUATION REPORT
The Municipal League’s Candidate Evaluation Report also includes a summary of each candidate’s civic involvement. Please summarize your civic involvement in the space below. We will make every attempt to include the information in the Candidate Evaluation Report as submitted. Due to space restrictions in the Report, your response is limited to 500 characters (letters, punctuation, and spaces all combined). It is important that you list your involvement beginning with the most important and ending with the least important. If you exceed the length of response permitted, or if the League should find it necessary to shorten responses for publication purposes, deletions will be made beginning with the last item listed.
Note: This information will appear verbatim on the League’s Candidate Evaluation Report. If this question is left blank, the Municipal League will not include information on your civic involvement in the Report.
Check here if you would like the Municipal League to copy the first 500 characters from Question 4 to paste into this section.
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- WTO Review Committee Hired by the Seattle City Council to manage the review of events related to the WTO meetins in Seattle 2000 -Town Hall, Board Member 2002-2003 - Town Hall is a nonprofit organization hosting political and cultural events in downtown Seattl -Sanctuary Art Center, Board Member 2001-2003 - The Sanctuary provides opportunities for homeless street youth to participate in variouis types of art projects. -Elevated Transportation Company - 2000 2002 Governor's appointment, served as board member and chair of the finance committee Also served on the boards of Country Doctor, Environmental Works, Metrocenter YMCA, and other nonprofit organiztions. |
Finished!
If at all possible, send your response to the Municipal League electronically as an attachment, or insert it into an e-mail message (rebecca@munileague.org). Mail and fax numbers are listed below. If the League has not contacted you to schedule an interview, please call the League office at your earliest convenience.
Don’t forget to send the following to the Municipal League: a resume, a photo, campaign literature, and, if you are an incumbent, constituent newsletters and other materials. Please use the check-off list on the cover sheet of this packet to indicate which items you have sent.
Candidate Evaluation Coordinator: Rebecca Cooper
Seattle, WA 98104-1614 Fax: 425-671-0506 Website: www.munileague.org