OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
OUR VIEW
ODOT needs more
accountability, and
better procedures
T
hose who proclaim government agencies should be run
like businesses are, in some ways, wrong.
A case in point: If government services and infrastruc-
ture were awarded to low-population areas in proportion to the
income they produce, large swaths of America wouldn’t have
paved roads, bridges or anything but one-room schools. Basic
politic principles and simple fairness would never allow such
overt neglect in the U.S.
When it comes to the Oregon Department of Transportation,
however, a valid argument definitely can be made for a some-
what more businesslike approach to such fundamental proce-
dures as setting priorities, seeking out differing opinions and
measuring how well goals are being achieved.
With a budget of roughly $2 billion a year and thousands of
employees, ODOT is one of the state’s largest organizations.
It’s no Nike or Intel, but it’s big enough — and so crucial to the
state’s safety and success — that it must adopt at least some les-
sons from the private corporate world in order to achieve all it
needs to do with the resources it has available. It wants even
more. ODOT, along with Oregon’s counties and cities, suggests
they might need up to an extra $5 billion a year to preserve roads
and bridges, ease congestion and bolster public transportation.
A nearly $1 million performance audit from New York-based
McKinsey & Co. — which the EO Media Group/Pamplin Media
Group Capital Bureau successfully pressed ODOT to release
last month — found the department acts like a complacent fam-
ily. Nobody in top management rocks the boat by questioning
the agency’s decisions. Though the audit is couched in the diplo-
matic code phrases of managerial consultants, the overall picture
of top ODOT management is uncomfortably close to the old cli-
ché of a clubby circle of friends standing around leaning on their
shovels kibitzing.
No dissenting voices
Consultant interviews with senior management found “no
example of individuals who considered themselves a ‘dissenting
voice.’” Government agencies, boards and commissions often go
to great effort to ensure such a lack of disagreement within their
ranks. However, from a public perspective, too many unanimous
decisions within an entity like ODOT are nearly always a sign
of trouble. It means no one is really speaking up to question old
assumptions or fight for significant changes in important matters.
In the case of Oregon’s transportation system, ODOT’s man-
agement team is supposed to be accountable to the five-member
governor-appointed Oregon Transportation Commission.
However, this effort at citizen oversight is not functioning as
it should. On Jan. 10, Tammy Baney, the commission’s chair-
woman, sent Gov. Kate Brown a letter asking for quarterly meet-
ings with Brown, along with an independent staff person to carry
out commissioners’ requests for information and research. Baney
also wants an “active” role in ODOT Director Matt Garrett’s
performance review. Most Oregon citizens will be surprised that
such basic elements of independent oversight are not already
in place. Without routine contact with the governor or a role in
reviewing the ODOT director, the commission becomes little but
a symbolic shell.
Lack of trust
Former commission Chairwoman Catherine Mater said the
request for an independent staffer indicates “a complete disin-
tegration of trust” between ODOT and the commission tasked
with overseeing it.
ODOT’s front-line workers clearly understand what is going
on. They told the consultants: “We need to ensure accountability
for performance and behavior problems … High-level managers
can talk the talk, but poor performers and poor behavior is still
tolerated … Good employees currently work hard through inter-
nal motivation and personal dedication to high quality service,
not because the agency rewards them.”
There is no doubt that Oregon needs substantial transportation
upgrades and maintenance. During a recent visit to Astoria, out-
going Port of Portland Executive Director Bill Wyatt emphasized
what most residents already know: Surrounding states invest
more heavily in highways, bridges and other essential infrastruc-
ture. Though Wyatt understandably focuses on obvious needs in
the Portland metro region, he is largely right in asserting that it is
a bottleneck that must be fixed to ensure a healthy future for the
state’s economic engine.
Ultimately, even if Congress grants President Donald Trump’s
wish for major national infrastructure spending, Oregon taxpay-
ers will have to pay much of the tab. Deficiencies in ODOT’s
management system necessitate a convincing and thorough
rebooting of this critical agency’s managerial and oversight
procedures.
It will be a fool’s errand to ask Oregon voters for a major hike
in transportation-related taxes until this basic work is done and
trust is restored.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
Shouting ‘Fire!’ in Gearhart
By R.J. MARX
The Daily Astorian
W
hile the Gearhart Firehouse
may look just fine to
the casual observer, for
firefighters and the community,
the building is a disaster waiting
to happen: seismically unable to
survive a Cascadia quake, too small
to accommodate modern equipment
and inadequate to provide shelter
or a gathering space after a natural
disaster.
Volunteer firefighter Josh Como
was among others at a January volun-
teer appreciation night to voice their
support for a new building.
“Whether it’s
for ease and acces-
sibility for people
to get in and out or
to store equipment,
right now we’re
maxed out on lock-
ers to have people store their gear,”
Como said. “We don’t have space for
any more new people or even to have
drills.”
“Infrastructure is huge for
Gearhart now,” Mayor Matt Brown
said. “We have to make sure we
protect our firefighters.”
During his 2016 campaign,
Brown said a new firehouse would be
a top city priority.
“It’s pretty dire,” fire committee
co-chairman Jay Speakman said.
“This station was built in the late
1950s by local volunteer labor that
came and did most of the work
themselves.”
The structure was constructed
using hollow tile and cinder block,
long before the impacts of a Cascadia
Subduction Zone event were known.
“It’s been determined that any rea-
sonably sized earthquake will possi-
bly collapse the building,” Speakman
said. “We’ve got many hundreds of
thousands of dollars of equipment
in this building and it would not be
prudent to jeopardize that by having a
building that’s not stable.”
Committee member Gary Gillam
pointed to a cornerstone with a dedi-
cation date of 1958.
“We have to create something for
these guys that addresses the needs
of today,” Gillam said. “It’s sagging
about 5 inches and we have a lake
every time it rains hard.”
Brown, former Mayor Dianne
Widdop, along with councilors like
committee co-chairwoman Sue
Lorain and councilor Dan Jesse, have
called the firehouse the city’s most
pressing issue.
The current building, Lorain
said, is “not only a piece of junk at
the present time, if we get a new
building, it would enhance our city
even more.”
The endgame, Lorain said, might
be to locate the new building out of
the tsunami zone.
“When we first started the com-
mittee a year ago, we all had a tour of
the fire hall,” she said. “We learned
about the cinder blocks that are crack-
ing, we learned about the walls that
are crumbling inside. It’s not such a
different scenario from the schools.”
Learning from the school bond
When Gearhart voted in 2006 on
a $3.75 million general obligation
bond measure to address the problem,
the proposal included plans for a
high-end building to house the police
department, City Hall and fire station.
“Several years ago there was a
bond issue put together by the fire
department with no citizen input at
all,” City Administrator Chad Sweet
said. “To a lot of people it seemed to
be extremely expensive with a lot of
bells and whistles that may not have
been necessary.”
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian
Josh Como, Lori Lum, Gary Gillam, Mayor Matt Brown and Sue Lo-
rain at the Gearhart Fire Department’s appreciation night.
The vote that year was 327-231,
with 58 percent of residents voting
against it.
Sweet, the city’s liaison to the
firehouse committee, said he believes
if the city had asked for a fire station
alone in 2006, voters would have
approved it. “One of the issues we
found by adding the City Hall as part
of the construction that it politicized
the issue,” he said this week. “This
time we’re exploring an approach to
just replace the fire station.”
But a second vote has waited
more than 10 years as other pressing
economic and infrastructure needs
siphoned attention.
Add to that the $99.7 million
Seaside bond last year to move
district schools — including Gearhart
Elementary School — out of the tsu-
nami zone, and a new firehouse again
got pushed to the back burner.
That bond, like the firehouse
bond, had been put in front of voters
in 2013 when it was proposed on a
grander scale. At $128.8 million, vot-
ers said not only “no,” but “hell no.”
‘We have
to create
something for
these guys that
addresses the
needs of today.’
Gary Gillam
fire committee member
However, Seaside officials, stu-
dents and community members knew
that this wasn’t a matter of if, but
when — and fashioned the new bond
to show greater economy of scale.
The summer and fall was spent rais-
ing support for the measure — which
ultimately won convincing approval.
Some of the same voices involved
in the school bond are seeking a
safer Gearhart as members of the fire
safety committee.
“I am on the fire safety commit-
tee,” said Lori Lum Toyooka, who
was also active in the school district’s
“Vote Yes for Our Local Schools”
group. “The building is old and needs
to be updated to current modern
standards.”
During last fall’s campaign,
advocates of the new campus took
the case not only to parents but to
retirees, families without children,
vacation property owners and other
stakeholders who may have been
neglected during the 2013 bond
campaign.
“Because I worked on the school
bond issue with Lori and others, we
should go to school with what the
school bond people did with a lot of
the grassroots meetings in homes,”
Gillam said. “It really helped this
time, as opposed to when it went
down three years ago.”
Details await
The firehouse committee was
appointed in September 2015, tasked
to examine the problem and come up
with solutions.
The committee looked at seven
possible sites, both city and private
property, including the current loca-
tion. “We created a matrix to grade
all of these sites,” Speakman said.
“We started with geology and some
of them were eliminated right away,
because they were close to water.”
Sites with low elevation and
unstable soils were also removed
from consideration.
Locations were prioritized by
distance from the general population,
accessibility for fire volunteers and
“survivability.”
While the report is not yet public,
Speakman said the group “went
wide” in their search, considering
the current Pacific Way location, the
Highlands, east of the highway and
on higher ground within the city.
“The bottom line is we want a
building that is survivable after a
good-sized earthquake that could be
followed by a tsunami,” Speakman
said.
In response to the 2006 bond
defeat, committee members this time
around have decided to concentrate
on a public safety building which
would include fire and police,
Speakman said. “We decided this
existing city hall could be renovated,
which could save a lot of money right
up front.”
“Last time the volunteers and the
city worked up a plan, the residents
weren’t very much a part of the
discussions,” Sweet said. “This
time a group of residents have come
together to discuss the issue and bring
this up as a grassroots effort.”
As for costs, “We don’t have a
number,” Speakman said. “We’re still
in the exploration phases. We do have
an architect and we do have a grant
from the city.”
The question is: Is there a civic
will for a new construction project?
For firefighters and the commu-
nity they protect, it can’t come soon
enough.
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and edi-
tor of the Seaside Signal and Cannon
Beach Gazette.