Grade: B+

Yes, I think the city should be more involved in policy and direction that impacts its neighborhoods and its citizens. That’s what city government does. It takes care of its citizens, its businesses and its visitors. It gets really important for there to be a forward-thinking approach as opposed to just looking at what we’ve always done and carrying it forward. We need to make sure that there’s economies of scale so that when we move from one initiative to another, we don’t lose everything that we’ve gained along the way.  We need to constantly recalibrate projections with the latest information available.

I have worked as a financial analyst, a systems analyst and I currently work as an accountant.  I know budgets and they’re much like any other plan. We have an energy plan, and it has projections. We know those are educated guesses based on modeling.  When more information comes in, the models continue to get better and better. If we have something that started with a set of data that is 10 years old, it’s not going to be as good as one that’s 5 years old, or 2 years old, or one year old.

I believe the government’s job is to make sure that the life that their citizens live is the best that it can be without getting too much in the way of what that is. I think that there are certain services that are offered to cities that are best held in the public realm as opposed to the private realm, which might seem odd because I have an economics and finance education. Typically, I’m all about market-driven things, and yet where people don’t have a choice, we need to have energy, we need to have roads.  There are certain things that we just need to have, and we cannot depend solely on market forces.

So, I would make sure that the city government asked the hard questions, got the answers to those questions and did not stop until the questions were satisfactorily answered. CENSE and other area groups who support neighborhood concerns have left some meetings with some staff members feeling that they have already made up their minds.  This leaves advocates with the impression that citizen involvement is not welcome. To me, that’s not acceptable.  I have been a champion of community involvement.

I’ve been Planning Commission chair and I’m currently Vice Chair of the East Bellevue Community Council, but I believe my role in the city that is the most significant is as a citizen. I want to be part of a council that embraces this philosophy. So, it’s not viewed as the “pesky public” that’s going to slow things down but rather it’s the wonderful, embraceable public that has the best answers.  Because they’re living it every day in all corners of Bellevue. If they’re willing to come forward and speak on behalf of others of their neighborhood, which is not easy to do. It’s really hard to do, and generally the one person who comes forward has a hundred people lined up behind them saying, “We’ve got kids in daycare, we’ve got our older parent we’re taking care of, please go speak for us and then let us know what happens.”

(see full question)

Utilities like Seattle City Light, Tacoma Power, and Snohomish County PUD are all forecasting flat or declining consumption of electricity for at least the next decade. These forecasts and Washington’s mandate to transition to a cleaner energy grid have implications for power planning. How might they influence your input to policies implemented at the city level?

Grade: B-

I would want to understand the forecasts. I’d want to see what their economic projections are, their building projections. I would want to see what their employment growth and what their residential growth is to make sure that it’s all on equal playing fields. I worked with a lot of key performance indicator data in my career.  Where you take indicators, divide by related units, and create a weighted measurement that you can compare against other areas that are different sizes and what not. I don’t know enough about each one of these cities, but I’m guessing Seattle is probably experiencing the same growth, if not more growth than Bellevue.  I do know that [Snohomish] is growing like crazy. Tacoma, I don’t know as much about. And so, if they’re projecting flat [demand growth], I’d want to see what the mix of the data is. Is it a difference between the way the data is collected? Who’s collecting the data, the interpretation of the collectors, etc. I would want more information of that nature in order to form a position.

Grade: A

It’s like we’re entering a jump rope game where the ropes are going around and around and around. I believe this is all decided business. If it opens up again, let’s go with the premise that I don’t know that there’s any potential of a reopening of the issue, we could try.  I wasn’t there when East Bellevue Community Council did their work regarding a power line going down 148^th Ave and I understand there were some procedural errors. There was a loss for the East Bellevue Community Council as well on jurisdiction over wetlands. That got decided in a lawsuit. I’m not sure it got decided appropriately, and I’m not sure that the East Bellevue Community Council had the best legal representation. I have my own personal feelings about that.

I really believe that the city and the East Bellevue Community need to follow proper procedure. It’s important for transparency to the public. It’s important for legality. It’s important for the equity of the people coming forward and what they’re representing.

That being said, can I just tell you the emotional side of it for me?  There’s a beautiful urban boulevard that goes right down the middle of Lake Hills. It goes all the way up to Redmond, almost to Woodinville. Right? It’s gorgeous. People will be driving down this beautiful urban corridor and they will hit not blight, but they will hit concrete and steel and wires through Lake Hills, one of the most affordable neighborhoods in Bellevue.

How did this get decided? I’ve heard lots of speculation about the price of it, the this, and the that. I wish all these questions would have been asked in terms of what has more value? You have intrinsic value of the aesthetics and the warmth and the soul that green space provides. Especially on a busy, well-traveled road that was set aside 30 years ago for the benefit of people today.

Big sacrifices were made to create this spectacular urban boulevard. Some people lost their property in order to create this gem. I wish more had been done to respect the history of that. Not to say we get stuck, but to say this open space, green space, is what nurtures us. Right? It’s important. There are wetlands there, and I’m concerned about that. I’m concerned about poles going into wetland.  Are they going to find things they don’t anticipate? Et cetera.

I just think it’s a huge lost opportunity where we could have done something really well. They talk about other routes and how the poles couldn’t go down that route because people couldn’t pay, or the company couldn’t pay to connect those houses. To which I would say, okay, can we do something creative? Can we do something where we help homeowners borrow against their future asset when they sell it, in order to put this in underground? Because it increases the property value.  Could we have some discussion about another way to do it, where it fits within whatever the energy companies parameters are of what they’re legally able to do and rates that they’re able to pass on to other people.

Sometimes it’s easy to go, “No, can’t do it.” Community acceptance comes when reasonable options have been explored and decisions explained.

Grade: B

I’d love to say yes, because that’s the right answer for this group, and yet I don’t feel I have enough information.

Right in our own backyard, we have three companies that we could learn best practices from. I’d like to see the projections. I’d like to see financial data on what’s the upside and the downside. What would happen to rates? What would happen to customers? Is there any tax benefit of having PSE? What’s the tax ramification? I would want to see what would happen to the ratepayers.

The whole notion of a corporation caring about their investors – that’s just how it works. Anybody who has money in a 401-K, wants their investment to grow. I want them to care about that. I want them to care about schoolteachers’ pensions. Utilities are a very safe investment for retirees. I don’t want anybody ever to lose their house because their investment failed.

HOWEVER, it must be what’s best for the people of Bellevue. So, I can say philosophically what I believe about shareholders and companies and all of that. As a public servant, I must care the most about the residents of Bellevue. So, I can understand their priorities. I can understand their bias. I can understand that and I think that’s fine. I just think that Bellevue’s responsibility isn’t to the schoolteachers in wherever they are (I heard Canada or Australia).  It’s hard to go around town and not hear about these things.

Our public service responsibility is to the ratepayers and the residents of Bellevue, to make sure that they have the best power, the most reliable power, for the most reasonable price, for the longest period possible, with minimal hiccups.