Flynn's Harp: Bozeman says time for cities-ports alliance (6-16-10)

Cary Bozeman, who was mayor of two Washington State cities and is now CEO of the Port of Bremerton, senses that revenue-starved local governments might be ready to sacrifice sacred silos to ease their financial strain by creating new public-public partnerships.

Bozeman is thinking specifically about an alliance between Washington’s cities and port districts, something he says might benefit taxpayers as well as the public entities that are facing shrinking resources.

So he wants to put together a statewide conference, either late this fall or early next year, that would draw representatives of the state’s 250 cities and 72 port districts to explore how such collaborations might be brought about.

“The old system of providing services isn’t going to work any longer in a financial environment in which public resources will continue to be challenged,” said Bozeman, who was elected mayor of Bellevue three times and of Bremerton twice.

“We’ve entered a time when political silos can’t work,” Bozeman said. “I think a good start to dealing with a new era for local government would be for cities and ports to explore how we can share things like economic development, tourism and recreational programs.”

Former Seattle mayor Greg Nickels and former Spokane mayor John Powers, as well as former Port of Seattle CEO Mic Dinsmore, think Bozeman’s proposal is an idea whose time has come.

 “I concur with his view that there are significant possible benefits to breaking down the political walls to advance the opportunity for a public-public partnership between cities and ports,” said Powers, who also served as CEO of economic-development focused Enterprise Seattle and headed Collier’s International’s Washington State operations.

“The upsides of the idea of cities-ports collaboration are many,” Dinsmore said. “For one thing, projects get built faster and at lower cost to the taxpayers. Joint marketing is more effective as well.”

Nickels, Seattle’s two-term mayor who was defeated last year in a bid for a third term, thinks that port powers relating to economic development should be the key focus of any more formal collaboration “because those are powers that cities don’t have.”

But he also raised what would be a hot political issue in any such silo-busting talks when he suggested “it would also be worth looking at the silos between ports,” noting that the ports of Seattle and Tacoma would together be the second largest port on the West Coast. But instead they’re constantly competing with each other.”

Bozeman was first elected to the Bellevue city council in 1976 at the age of 36 and subsequently was elected three times as mayor of the state’s fourth largest city, simultaneously serving over much of that time as the head of the King County Boys and Girls Club.

He moved to Bremerton in 1996 to run the Olympic College Foundation and six years later ran for mayor of that city, both because he saw the potential to revitalize the decaying downtown area and because of “a love for local government, where you can make things happen.”

Bozeman first proposed the city-ports cooperation idea in a speech in Spokane about a month ago and says the reaction since then has been positive. So now he’s putting together the steering committee he hopes will take the lead on a conference.

 “Port districts in Washington State have some interesting legal powers, which is why so many port districts have been created in Washington State,” he said. That’s why they’ve been formed across the state, even in places far from any body of water larger than a lake.

“Ports can build sports facilities, provide recreational opportunities for people like parks and marinas and collaborate on economic development and job creation.”

Pointing to the budget-driven decision by some cities to close a majority of their parks, Bozeman said “ports could absolutely have an impact on those sorts of spending challenges. Ports have the authority to generate the resources to support park systems as one example of what they could bring to a partnership.”

Bozeman suggested “the future of government providing necessary services and doing economic development is going to be about devising ways to cooperate with other government agencies, non-profits and the private sector. The silos in which we’ve worked all these years simply must be broken down.”

“Over time it’s not just developing public-public relationships that will be important,” offered Powers, the Spokane mayor turned economic development director turned private sector business leader. “It ultimately will be about a triadic relationship that invites and balances participation from private enterprise, public entities and civic organizations to address big regional issues, as some are suggesting for national and global issues.”