Candidates for Grays Harbor PUD commissioner and for Grays Harbor Country Prosecutor visited the North Beach last week to make a pitch to voters before primary election ballots went out in the mail July 16.
Appearing in a July 15 forum sponsored by the North Beach Community Improvement Association, the candidates addressed several North Beach-related issues and fielded questions from about 20 local residents.
The primary election is Aug. 5, with the general election Nov. 4.
PUD Candidates
Incumbent Russ Skolrood, a Hoquiam High School teacher, noted the position is non-partisan and that he “is not a politician. What you see is what you get.”
When he was first elected to the six-year term in 2008, Skolrood said his biggest goal was to “stop buying what we wanted and getting down to what we really needed for the PUD. I’m very proud of that. I think we have come a long ways and we’re on the right track. We have revamped a lot.”
Skolrood has been president of the three-member commission for the past three years, and has presided over a major change in management, with Bob Ward replacing Rick Lovely as general manager.
“I want to try to finish up what I started,” Skolrood said.
John Straka, lifelong Harbor resident now retired from owning a trucking company and being a social worker, said he has been an avid observer of PUD operations for several years.
“I decided this time I was going to get involved. My goal is to get rates down,” Straka said.
“What I don’t like and what I don’t want to see anymore is when people come in and talk about how they have to go down to one room in their home and use a space heater and electric blanket to keep warm,” he said.
Frank Moses, a retired PUD worker and former commissioner, noted that Grays Harbor PUD’s minimum charge is higher than many surrounding counties.
“Just our minimum charge, which is the basic charge you have on your power bill, is $39. In Raymond, it’s $13. So we are three times higher than they are,” Moses said.
He noted that when Lovely departed as general manager, the current PUD commissioners “awarded him a $1,400 trip to Florida. Why? I don’t know.”
Moses also brought up the amount of money lost in taking the so-called Spradlin case through appeals after a Superior Court judge sided with contractor Tim Spradlin over disputed payments stemming from emergency work during the 2007-08 winter storm disaster.
“I think we lost $7 million on that,” Moses said. He also listed failed projects such as $1 million spent on a wind project proposed at Radar Ridge near Naselle and on a generator at the now closed and dismantled Grays Harbor Paper.
Regarding rates, Skolrood said it was “unrealistic” to say that rates would become lower.
“The price of power keeps going up. The Bonneville Power Administration has raised our rates 23 percent,” he said.
Raising rates, Skolrood added, “is not an easy thing for me. I work in a high school, and I have kids come up to me and their power is being shut off and that is not easy. You have people who call you on the phone and tell you they have to make a choice between power and food. I used to sleep a lot better six years ago.”
He noted that he has to pay those rates, too, just like his family, friends and neighbors.
Straka lauded PUD workers in general and noted he had attended a program known as PUD Academy, which provided a behind-the-scenes look at how the public utility operates.
On issues related to the North Beach, Straka said the wind along with trees close to power lines cause most of the problems, and he suggested it might be cost-effective in the long run to look at how to put more lines underground.
“But given the dollars that are out and the rates that we can afford to pay any more, with the lack of jobs around here I think we are stuck trying to manage the tree problems in the lines,” Straka said.
Moses said when he was commissioner, the plan was to connect a third main electrical feed to the North Beach, one going to Quinault, one to Ocean Shores, with the third from Grass Creek to Powell Road.
“The intent was to have three ways to switch” when the power went out in any one area, according to Moses.
“We looked at growth, and growth was here on the North Beach, with Seabrook and with Ocean Shores, and that’s kind of where we wanted to put our money,” Moses said.
The Powell Road substation, Skolrood said, “won’t be online for a while because we have had to make a lot of cuts over the last six years. A lot of those plans get shelved.”
He said that six years ago, the PUD had $140 million, which has now been cut to $130 million, with capital improvement spending reduced from $15 million to $7 million. Power sales (part of a BPA program to sell excess power) in return have dropped from $63 million in revenue to $19 million.
“That’s a huge cut in your income. Even though it sounds great to have another third line redundancy, you can’t do that in the era that we have just come out of. It’s not responsible,” Skolrood said.
County Prosecutor
Katie Svoboda noted she became an attorney after growing up in Hoquiam and spending the first years of her career in local banking, working for a time in the Ocean Shores branch of Timberland Bank.
“Community service has always been important,” Svoboda said as to why she chose to become a prosecutor, serving as senior deputy prosecutor with the Grays Harbor Prosecutor’s Office.
“There are definitely things the office needs, and the office needs me and my experience and first-hand knowledge of what we need to do,” she said.
Mike Spencer, who previously served as Grays Harbor Prosecuting Attorney and as Superior Court Judge, also pointed to his experience as to why he should be elected after being in private practice for the past 22 years.
“I do have a lot of civil experience. Civil experience is important,” Spencer said.
“That should not be forgotten in this election,” he added. “I have experience representing large corporations, Safeco, Weyerhaeuser, Anchor Bank, Mason Trucking.”
In his term as prosecutor, Spencer said, he tried 110 criminal jury trials or more and lost only four times.
“Criminally, I am a very good prosecuting attorney,” Spencer said.
Asked how they would handle the notable increase in property crimes in the North Beach and other outlying areas of the county, both promised to get tougher.
Spencer said he was involved in initially forming the county’s Drug Task Force.
“I think there is a lot of rampant drug use around here,” he said. “It has to be addressed uniformly and it has to be addressed by the leader of the law enforcement community in this community, and that’s the county prosecutor.”
Svoboda acknowledged that county budget issues and staffing departures have played a role.
“We have not had the staffing or the attorneys that we have needed,” she said of attrition in the office.
“We’re not doing a good job right now of maximizing the technology we already have,” Svoboda said.
The Sheriff’s Department, she noted, is currently trying to bring back the concept of neighborhood or block watches, and that some of the information includes tips from the prosecutor about what you should do when your house gets broken into, and how to document the loss of goods.
“The drug issue is out of control,” Svoboda said. She rotated a new deputy prosecutor into the drug spot, who came to the office from Thurston county.
“The better we use our time, the more time we can address those things,” she said of drug and property-related crimes.
No comments:
Post a Comment