PORT ANGELES — Who is “Candidate A?”
The chairman of the Harbor-Works Public Development Authority Board of Directors said Friday that the identity of the board’s pick for executive director will remain a secret, even though the candidate’s employers will be contacted as a reference for him.
Other board members also said they will wait to reveal their top choice’s identify until an employment contract is signed.
The five-member board of the public development authority — which is funded by the city of Port Angeles and Port of Port Angeles — selected Candidate A on April 10 for the job budgeted at $144,000 annually, but declined to identify him, or any of the other three candidates interviewed that day, in order to keep their current employers from knowing that they are looking for another job.
On Friday, Port Angeles Human Resource Director Bob Coons, which is participating in the negotiations with Candidate A and is conducting reference checks, said the candidate’s current employers will be contacted — if they hadn’t been already — as a reference.
Coons said he will not contact the employer, and couldn’t confirm if the employer has been contacted by board members Howie Ruddell and Karen McCormick, who are also doing reference checks, but added that he wouldn’t be surprised if they had completed that task.
Not until contract signed
Board chairman Orville Campbell said Friday that the identity of the person chosen to lead the public development authority will not be revealed until the signing of the employment contract.
“I think it’s my inadequacy in not being able to identify every conceivable way a candidate may be harmed as a result of putting his name out in public,” he said.
Campbell said Candidate A’s identify will remain a secret “because there may be out there, reasons that I don’t know about” to justify keeping the name confidential.
Coons said Candidate A does know that his references are being checked, but wasn’t told that he is the top choice.
“I’m sure he knows,” he added.
Candidate A is one of about 25 candidates for the job.
Coons declined to say if any other candidates are having their references checked.
Campbell said on April 10 that Candidate A — like the board’s second choice, “Candidate D” — is a man and lives in the state, and again declined to provide additional information Friday.
“It’s going to all come out” when the contract is signed, he said.
McCormick, who is president and CEO of First Federal, also declined Friday to provide any further information about Candidate A.
“I’m really not to comfortable in revealing that,” she said Friday, prior to Coons speaking with the Peninsula Daily News.
“That would be giving information that is not appropriate at this time. We do want to protect all of the candidates . . . and make sure our options are open all the way around.”
She said negotiations with Candidate A had not begun.
McCormick said that she, Coons and Ruddell, who owns Ruddell Auto Mall in Port Angeles, probably will meet this week to create an offer.
“We hope to begin negotiations as soon as humanely possible,” she said.
Former Port of Port Angeles Executive Director Clyde Boddy has been serving as Harbor-Works’ second interim executive director since Feb. 9. Jim Haguewood, Clallam County Business Incubator executive director, was hired in July and left in January.
The Harbor-Works board had planned to have a contract ready for approval within seven to 10 days of April 10.
Rayonier property
One of the executive director’s first tasks will be to negotiate a purchase and sale agreement with Rayonier Inc. for its 75-acre site on the east side of the Port Angeles Harbor, Campbell has said.
A draft purchase and sale agreement was negotiated between the city and Rayonier in June.
Harbor-Works’ charter says its purpose is to assist in the environmental cleanup of the Rayonier site, direct its redevelopment and assist in shoreline planning.
Acquiring any of the Rayonier property will make Harbor-Works liable for cleanup.
Cleanup site since 2000
The property has been a state Department of Ecology cleanup site since 2000.
It is contaminated by PCBs, dioxins and other contaminates from the operation of a Rayonier mill there for 68 years. The mill closed in 1997.
In 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called the Rayonier site “moderately contaminated,” perhaps 2 or 3 on a scale of 10.
As a public entity, Harbor-Works eventually could receive an Ecology grant to cover up to 50 percent of the cleanup if it acquires the property.
Ecology staff have said they will not allocate such money to Harbor-Works within the next two years due to budget constraints.
Harbor-Works’ current funds come from two $150,000 loans — one from the city and one from the port. Harbor-Works’ 2009 budget, when completed, will involve additional requests for funding from the city and port, Campbell has said.
The Rayonier property is also the former site of a Lower Elwha Klallam village, and the tribe is a partner in the cleanup.
The city’s main impetus in forming Harbor-Works was to help it acquire a 5-million-gallon water tank that still stands on the mill site from Rayonier at no cost — in exchange for the city taking part in the cleanup of the property through Harbor-Works — although this wasn’t disclosed publicly by city staff until a City Council meeting in December.
The water tank would be used by the city to store untreated sewage during heavy rainfall in order to keep it from overflowing into marine waters.
The city is under an Ecology order to nearly eliminate overflow events by 2016, or face a fine of $10,000 a day.
Potential costs for acquisition of the tank haven’t been discussed publicly by Rayonier or the city.
Rayonier executives have said they won’t sell the tank to the city unless Harbor-Works acquires the rest of the property.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
