‘The future is brighter than the past.’ Tacoma port leaders look back at tenures
By the end of the year, two longtime members on the Port of Tacoma Commission will have attended their last meeting.
Commission president Clare Petrich and vice president Don Johnson are retiring at the end of the year, making way for newly elected Kristin Ang and Deanna Keller.
Petrich was first elected to the commission in 1995, Johnson in 2007.
The two recently sat down with The News Tribune to reflect on their time on the commission.
Both said the the port has come a long way but that it is time for them to move on.
“I think the future is brighter than the past was, from my perspective,” Johnson said. “We’ve solved a lot of issues. We’ve covered a lot of ground.”
“For me, I just thought 24 years was a fantastic period of time,” Petrich said. “Honestly, when I started, I thought I’d probably be here for one term.”
The Northwest Seaport Alliance
One of the achievements that still resonates was the creation in 2014 of the Northwest Seaport Alliance with the Port of Seattle.
Did Tacoma get lost in the shuffle after the alliance was formed? Absolutely not, both said, saying it was important to keep the bigger picture in perspective.
“People need to fly 30,000 feet because they get lost when they fly 5,000 feet,” Johnson said.
“You’ve got to keep it at the 30,000-foot level on what we want to do over the next 20 years, 10 years and how we’re going to move forward on that.”
Before forming the alliance, Johnson noted, “We were competing against each other. How dumb is that?”
Instead, now “we split the revenues, and our competitors are now Canada and California and the East Coast and Gulf Coast states and it’s not each other,” he said.
“The purpose of the Seaport Alliance was to determine who the competitor was, and that it wasn’t us,” he added.
As for the biggest lessons learned during their time, they point to when the port saw plans fall through to build a shipping terminal and related infrastructure for NYK Line, coupled with the Great Recession and cleanup of contaminated properties.
“We just had to dig ourselves out of it,” Petrich said.
All of which led eventually to the commission seeking an alliance, which is now in its fifth year.
“It took a long time to see what had been a very competitive relationship with Seattle,” Petrich said, “and how actually we were going to make it work, what it meant for governance, how we would actually make it fair for both communities. And the solution that we came up with was the 50/50 arrangement, both on financial investment and payout.
“People have to understand that the success of the home port, especially the Port of Tacoma, because we are a maritime port and have been forever, that it depends on the success of the alliance.”
LNG, the environment and tariffs
Both emphasized keeping the long-range goals of the port in focus, and Petrich noted that includes Puget Sound Energy’s liquified natural gas facility, which has been met with vocal pushback from critics.
“I think people in this community need to have a larger worldview, especially when we’re looking at environmental projects,” she said. “And by that I can refer simply to the LNG plant. What we’re seeing is that that is the fuel that is being used by people in various parts of the world because it is the next step in creating cleaner fuels.”
Petrich expressed that same view when she spoke at a public hearing related to the project’s permitting in August, one of just a handful of those speaking in support of the project.
Johnson said it takes a balance of business and environmental stewardship.
“We’ve invested millions and millions of dollars in environmental projects that financially have no return. So it’s a balance. How do I keep the business going? How do I create jobs? And how do I keep the port competitive and do the environmental things on the side?” he said.
“You have to do them at a pace that allows you to be able to pay for them.”
Another point of concern: tariffs.
“That has an effect on the port right now,” Petrich said. “We’ve had booms and busts in 24 years, definitely we’ve had recessions ... what’s the most difficult thing and sometimes the worst is what’s happening in the world that affects the business of the port over which you have no control.”
