PORT ANGELES — The City Council will officially be under new leadership starting this evening.
At their 6 p.m. meeting, the three returning council members will welcome three new colleagues and a mayor and deputy mayor will be chosen.
All six will then discuss how to appoint Larry Little’s replacement for the seventh council seat.
Little, elected in November and sworn in Dec. 29, resigned on New Year’s Eve, citing family health needs.
Reaching consensus
What direction this new council — a hybrid of those elected in 2007 and 2009 — will travel depends likely on who it selects as mayor and how well all the council members can work to reach consensus on issues both big and small.
And what differentiates this council most from the last one is that it is made entirely up of first-term council members: Dan Di Guilio, Cherie Kidd and Don Perry, all elected in 2007, and Max Mania, Brooke Nelson and Patrick Downie, all of whom were elected last November.
Absent are the previous council’s most veteran members: Gary Braun, who served on the council in 1992-1999 and 2002-2009; Larry Williams, in 1998-2009; Karen Rogers, in 2002-2009; and Betsy Wharton, who served one term starting in 2006.
Combined, they have attended about 960 regular council meetings and helped guide city policy through such events as the uncovering of Tse-whit-zen village, job losses from the closure of the Rayonier and KPly mills as well as numerous commercial businesses, the global economic recession, formation of the William Shore Memorial Pool District, construction of the new Eighth Street bridges and The Gateway bus transit center, transitions through four city managers and creation of the Port Angeles Harbor-Works Development Authority.
Di Guilio said their expertise will be missed.
“Obviously they had the institutional knowledge,” he said.
“They have a broader background and understanding of the issues that we are dealing with.”
“I’m confident,” he added, “that we can rise to the challenge.”
Three of the now former council members, Braun, Rogers and Wharton, agreed to be interviewed about their time on the council (Williams refused).
Here is a bit about them and what they had to say.
• Gary Braun
For Braun, a 74-year-old lifelong Port Angeles resident, former city fire marshal and its most recent mayor, retirement has always been about doing more with his time, not less.
And giving time to the city, as his cluttered pocket calendar shows, has been a priority for nearly two decades.
Over a total of 16 years on the council, he has served twice as mayor — a largely ceremonial but at times influential role — and once as deputy mayor.
His tenure on the council began in 1992. It was seven years after he retired from his position as fire marshal, which ended a 26-year-long career with the Port Angeles Fire Department.
“I just felt that I could help out in a lot of ways,” said Braun, referring to his career as a city employee.
“I always felt that I wanted to help people,” he added, in between bites of coffee cake at a local coffee shop last week.
Due to the council’s former term-limit rule, which allowed someone to serve up to two consecutive terms, he left the council in 1999.
He returned in 2002 and replaced Rogers as the council-appointed mayor in 2008. He kept the mayoral position through 2009.
During both sets of terms, Braun worked part-time as a U.S. Customs inspector. He left that job in December 2002.
Last year, Braun decided not to seek re-election after finding 16 years to be enough.
Volunteering
Braun said he still intends to be kept busy with volunteering for the Clallam County Historical Society.
But he also expects to pick up another activity or two to fill in the empty space in his calendar no longer taken up by the council.
“There’s a lot of things to do in Port Angeles,” he said. “It depends where you want to go.”
Braun, reflecting fondly on his time on the council, said it “never ceases to amaze me that we did so much in such a short period of time.”
A couple personal highlights for him were bringing a police dog program to the city and signing the federal Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act as deputy mayor in 1992.
But with every council, there are hurdles to overcome.
The largest during his tenure, Braun said, has been the recession.
“This recession has generally slowed things down,” he said. “The revenue stream is lacking.”
In terms of future challenges the city faces, Braun said the big one is maintaining and improving the city’s infrastructure while at the same time covering unfunded mandates from federal and state governments.
But perhaps the largest challenge he faced as a council person was in 2008 when Mark Madsen, then city manager, resigned and cited poor working relationships with some of the council members.
At that time, council colleague Williams suggested that Braun resign as mayor for the sake of “good, clear new leadership.”
During last week’s interview, Braun declined to comment on Madsen’s resignation.
“I’m a positive person,” he said. “That is in the past.
“I don’t want to [conjure] up the past. I see no purpose.”
• Karen Rogers
Rogers, a business and political campaign consultant who joined the council in 2002, also chose to not seek re-election last year.
In an interview Monday, she cited poor working relationships with a few council members — whom she declined to identify — as reasons for her exit.
“It was some difficulty with this current council . . . a couple council members in regards to some trust relationships” caused her not to seek re-election, she said.
Rogers, who has been called the most active member on the City Council by her colleagues, said the decision was made with “mixed reservations.”
“I always enjoyed being an elected official,” she said. “I enjoy working hard every day for all the citizens.”
“I have great pride about it,” Rogers, 51, added.
“And I can leave with my head held high and knowing that I did a good job.”
While not shutting the door on seeking elected office in the future, Rogers said her only plans involve expanding her “business portfolio.”
In terms of accomplishments, she cited the settlement agreement she negotiated with the state and Lower Elwha Klallam tribe over the abandoned Hood Canal Bridge graving yard project, bringing high-speed Internet to Port Angeles and being an advocate for improving the city’s infrastructure.
The graving yard on the Port Angeles waterfront would have built replacement components for the Hood Canal Bridge, but its construction was canceled about five years ago after Native American remains and artifacts were first uncovered in 2003.
Stressful situation
Through the negotiations, which resulted in the city getting $7.5 million from the state for economic development, Rogers represented the city.
“It was very hard, very emotional, a lot of stress, a lot of reward,” said Rogers, who added that tribal Chairwoman Frances Charles earned her “complete respect” during that time.
She also complemented Gov. Christine Gregoire, but not Doug MacDonald, who then was state transportation secretary.
“I think what I’m most disappointed in is how Secretary MacDonald handled it,” Rogers said, referring to his relationship with Seattle Times reporter Lynda Mapes who was covering the graving yard incident.
The two were married in 2007.
Their relationship was first reported by the Peninsula Daily News on Aug. 9, 2009.
In regards to Madsen’s resignation, Rogers said she was frustrated that an attempt wasn’t made by the entire City Council to keep him from leaving.
“Well, I would have at least convened the council in executive session and had an honest, open discussion about it,” she said when asked what she would have done if mayor at the time.
Rogers was the council’s representative with the Port of Port Angeles on the creation of Harbor-Works in 2008.
Some residents have criticized the council for approving its creation at the same meeting when the idea was premiered publicly.
The public development authority is tasked with redeveloping Rayonier’s pulp mill site and assisting with the waterfront property’s environmental cleanup.
“We had public outreach for over a year-and-a-half,” Rogers said referring to meetings on possible future use of the property.
“We finally made a decision. And Port Angeles takes too long to make decisions,” she added.
“I fully support open public process but at some point you are not going to get 100 percent consensus.”
• Betsy Wharton
Wharton, a registered nurse elected to the council in 2006, lost to Nelson in the November general election.
Wharton said she plans to go back to work as a nurse and continue her work with the Port Angeles Farmers Market and Feiro Marine Life Center.
But like Rogers, has not ruled out another run at public office.
Wharton, 49, said she was proud to support “sustainability” while in office, such as the creation of bike lines, while keeping a focus on economic development.
When asked what advice she would give the new council members, she said:
“Speak your mind . . . and once a decision has been made, embrace it.”
Wharton referred to the creation of Harbor-Works as an example.
“I had a lot of reservations about it when we created it, and I decided to vote for it because I knew that it was going to happen and I would rather be a player than stand on the sidelines and be a critic,” she said.
Wharton defended a December 2008 City Council meeting she spearheaded where the council members reviewed the reasons for creating the public development authority.
“It was all an attempt to create little more cohesive commitment to the organization to help the organization be successful,” she said, adding that the idea for the meeting came out of conversations with Harbor-Works board members.
When asked about Madsen’s resignation, Wharton said she was surprised by his “public criticism of council members on his way out.”
“It wasn’t working for him but I don’t think that was a very graceful exit,” she said.
Wharton was one of the council members, along with Perry and Kidd, named by Madsen in City Hall e-mails that was not getting along with.
“I wasn’t looking to get rid of him or anything like that,” she said.
“It just sort of unraveled.”
Wharton said she chose to run for office because she disagreed with some of the council’s handling of the uncovering of Tse-whit-zen and the reorganization of the parks and planning departments.
Like Rogers, Wharton also developed a good relationship with the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
They both said they see a good relationship with the tribe as critical for the City Council and urged new council members to make time to meet Tribal Council members.
• Larry Williams
Williams, a real estate broker, alleged a poor relationship with the PDN when he declined a request for an interview.
He stepped down from the council because of term limits and said he doesn’t expect to run for public office again.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
