2012 ELECTION COVERAGE
EWEB
Candidates
Differences appear subtle between Mital, Shaver
By Ted Taylor
he Friendly Area Neighbors association
held a forum for EWEB candidates
recently and only about 15 people
showed up and most of them were
family and friends of the two candidates,
Steve Mital and Will Shaver. EW
interviewed the two candidates a few days after the
forum.
Only Shaver has lawn signs, catching Mital by
surprise when he saw a Shaver for EWEB sign on a
lawn near his home.
“I totally didn’t realize that was just two doors down
from him,” says Shaver with a laugh. “Totally random
chance.” The two men, both with strong backgrounds
in sustainability management, have been in a friendly
competition so far to fill the open seat representing
Wards 1 & 8. Incumbent Joann Ernst is not seeking
re-election.
Mital is sustainability director at UO, founder of the
Environmental Leadership Program at UO and has
master’s degrees from UO in both community planning
and environmental studies. He has volunteered on the
board of the Northwest Earth Institute, Oregon
University System Sustainability Committee and the
Mayor’s Bold Steps Committee. Shaver has a bachelor’s
degree in software engineering from OIT and is senior
technical manager at Emberex Custom Software. He
has volunteered on the Eugene Sustainability
Commission, Churchill Area Neighbors, City Club of
Eugene and West Eugene Corridor Committee.
T
14 MAY 3, 2012
EUGENE WEEKLY
The candidates have somewhat different views on
selling city water to Veneta. Shaver says it is
“unfortunate” that “a percentage of the population that
works in Eugene can’t afford to live in Eugene, so they
move to these other communities.” He cites two
reasons for selling water: “to perfect the water rights
and make sure the usage quantity is up enough to retain
the rights to that water,” and “to reduce the costs to
ratepayers.” After Hynix shut down its large
consumption of water, he says, “we’re paying more in
our bills” and “selling water to another community is a
way to defray some of those fixed costs.”
Mital says he understands the economic and legal
arguments, “but in theory that doesn’t make a lot of
sense,” he says. “Even if we have some legal
requirements built into it that should we ever need that
water back, we can force them to turn off their water?
Politically that’s impossible.” He says once Veneta
builds an infrastructure around the availability of
water, and property values and economic plans are tied
to it, EWEB would not be able to reclaim the water.
“So I don’t understand how that preserves that water
right because it’s not ours any more. We’ve given it to
Veneta.”
Mital also cites concerns for urban sprawl in a
bedroom community that “had some natural limits that
it was bumping up against and we’re finding a
somewhat unnatural expansion of that limit. Is that
what we really want to do? I’m a little surprised at the
direction EWEB is taking.”
When asked about EWEB’s cash reserves, neither
candidate knew how much they were, but Mital had
more to say on the subject: “If you think about that
$300 million in annual operating expenses,” he says,
“what a financial adviser would tell you or me is you
ought to keep about three months of your household
expenses in the bank for whatever kind of contingencies
come your way, so for EWEB that would be about $100
million. So if they have $10 or $20 million in reserves
that would be very conservative.” EWEB spokesperson
Joe Harwood says EWEB at the end of 2011 had about
$79.3 million in various reserve funds, including $33.1
million in the “power and rate stabilization reserve.”
Regarding smart meters, both candidates want to go
forward with caution, particularly regarding safety, but
see the long-term advantages of EWEB being able to
implement time-of-day power pricing. For example,
Shaver is concerned about the “tremendous amount of
strain on the system” that will happen when just 10
percent of the vehicles in Eugene are electric and will
require daily recharging.
Shaver is endorsed by Chris Pryor, George Poling,
John Brown, John Simpson, Ron Farmer, Sandra
Bishop, Mary Leighton, Munir Katul, Jack Roberts,
Sue Prichard, Mark Frohnmayer, Rusty Rexius, Gerry
Gados and others. See willshaver.com
Mital is endorsed by Mayor Kitty Piercy, Bob
Cassidy, Dick Helgeson, Jean Tate, John Reynolds,
Mel Bankoff, Tom Bowerman, Shawn Boles, Lorraine
Kerwood, the R-G, and others. See stevemital.com
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