PORT ANGELES — The Harbor-Works Public Development Authority expects to finish contract negotiations today or Thursday with its pick for executive director, the chairman of its board of directors said.
The identity of the man known as “Candidate A” has not been released.
Orville Campbell, chairman of the five-member board, said Tuesday that he will not release the candidate’s name to avoid “embarrassment” for the candidate and the public development authority if a deal isn’t reached.
When the board chose Candidate A for the position on April 10, Campbell said his or her identity won’t be released in order to keep a current employer from knowing that the person is looking for another job, even though that employer is one of the candidate’s references.
On April 17, Campbell said he couldn’t think of another reason not to release information on the candidate, but decline to do so anyway.
“I think we need to be sure that we have an executive director before we announce who it is,” Campbell said Tuesday.
“It avoids embarrassment if we cannot reach an agreement.”
Campbell also declined to provide information on the candidate’s occupation or professional background.
“It starts to narrow the field, and then people start speculating about who it is,” he said.
Campbell also declined to say how much Harbor-Works is offering the candidate.
The position is budgeted at $144,000 a year.
Campbell said he expects the board to consider approval of the contract at its Monday meeting.
Harbor-Works was formed by the City Council and port commission on May 20.
The public development authority’s 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.
Harbor-Works’ charter says its purpose is to assist in the slow-moving environmental cleanup of the former mill site, which is owned by Rayonier Inc., on east side of the Port Angeles waterfront, direct its redevelopment and assist in shoreline planning.
One of the executive director’s first tasks will be to negotiate a purchase and sale agreement with Rayonier for the property, Campbell has said.
Acquiring the property, which could take a year after the agreement is signed, will make Harbor-Works liable for cleanup of the property, which has been a state Department of Ecology cleanup site since 2000.
As a public entity, Harbor-Works eventually could receive an Ecology grant to cover up to 50 percent of the cleanup cost if it acquires the property. Cleanup has been estimated at tens of millions of dollars by Ecology staff.
Ecology staff said in January that they are not considering allocating such money to Harbor-Works within the next two years because of budget constraints.
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.
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.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
