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Bob Andrew for PDS Assistant Director, Whatcom County Why Now? Bob is so New Here! He came here on assignment in October 2005 on a medium-term consulting engagement (Oct 2005 to March 2006 without his family), settled into Birch Bay as a tenant, and soon became involved at Birch Bay Steering Committee. Because of his experience with both transportation and land use issues in Washington, D.C. his advice was quickly sought out on issues such as traffic calming. Expertise from Other Jurisdictions From his upbringing in New Zealand, later returning there in the 1980's to teach and work, Bob has lived under both Parliamentary and Federal forms of government. At the local level, he brings knowledge of how workable it is having one single government entity in a county with stable geographic bounds, rather than a rural county government surrounding towns whose borders keep changing over time. He also brings intimate knowledge of the feasibility of establishing a Business Improvement District in those areas where that might make sense (such as the business license owners along Birch Bay Drive): a self-assessing BID that is targeted at levels of service above what are reasonable for the county to do e.g. prompt response to an initial clearing of the road of logs after a flood, leaving the heavy work for the county, or nightly street sweeping in summer tourist season, seasonal staff on the street to direct tourists etc. Bob's Whatcom Co. Knowledge? Bob's Preparedness for This Job As a commitment to settling into this area, Bob arranged to wrap up his full-time consulting assignment a few weeks earlier than planned, except from some ongoing coordination with the engineers he handed the work onto. Given his professional background in facilities engineering, he committed himself in the meantime to investigating the technical options in improving cellular and data communications within Urban Growth Areas. He has drafted a second discussion document in improved cellular service for SVCA, using a historic barn but conforming with the NTHP standards for "Locating Telecommunications Towers in Historic Buildings" Bob has also participated in the GovTech "Digital
Communities" half-day seminar series launch in Seattle, and has
identified the feasibility providing Cisco mesh micro-cell data infrastructure
for communities like Birch Bay. For a business district This has the potential
to have a priority channel for security purposes that could be shared with
public safety, fee-paid access for cafes or rental accommodation, and free
access in the public commons. This was to be the topic for a
Feb 21 Birch Bay Chamber luncheon, which has been deferred. Bob comes from an Engineering Background, rather than Planning but worked directly with NCPC and DC on planning issues such as streetscape and pocket parks that had fallen between the cracks. In technology, he's experienced in GIS, and in relational database systems as used in the current Accela 'Permits Plus' system. On Grants Management, he was worked directly with the federal Grants.gov tools used for tracking funds given to local organizations. He can certainly deal with it on the grants recipient end, and be innovative in pursuing opportunities for synergy in applying for grants funding. On the personnel experience side, Bob looks forward to an interview opportunity to discuss directly with the County management and staff what their expectations are in a progressive, unionized, organization. |