NPI’s Gael Tarleton elected to serve as President of Seattle Port Commission

Ear­li­er this evening, the Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion con­clud­ed its first meet­ing for the year 2012, at which Com­mis­sion­ers Bill Bryant and Gael Tar­leton (one of NPI’s found­ing board mem­bers) were sworn in for their sec­ond terms in office, fol­low­ing the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Novem­ber gen­er­al elec­tion a few weeks ago.

The Com­mis­sion also elect­ed its offi­cers for the next twelve months, and I’m delight­ed to report that Gael was elect­ed as the com­mis­sion’s pres­i­dent for the first time. (Gael also serves as NPI’s pres­i­dent, and has since March 2011).

John Creighton was elect­ed to the posi­tion of vice pres­i­dent, and Tom Albro was elect­ed to the posi­tion of sec­re­tary. Creighton is in the midst of his sec­ond term on the com­mis­sion, while Albro is halfway through his first.

Lat­er in the meet­ing, com­mis­sion­ers autho­rized Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Tay Yoshi­tani and his staff to move for­ward on sev­er­al mat­ters under a con­sent cal­en­dar, includ­ing the exe­cu­tion of a new Col­lec­tive Bar­gain­ing Agree­ment (CBA) between the Port and the Inter­na­tion­al Long­shore and Ware­house Union Local 9 through Decem­ber 31st, 2014. (The con­tract is with avi­a­tion oper­a­tions and secu­ri­ty work­ers, who are rep­re­sent­ed by ILWU).

Com­mis­sion­ers also approved a motion acknowl­edg­ing that tomor­row is Human Traf­fick­ing Aware­ness Day. Human traf­fick­ing is a seri­ous (and under-report­ed) crime that vic­tim­izes more than ten thou­sand peo­ple each year. It is the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry ver­sion of slav­ery, and it must be stamped out.

As I men­tioned back in Novem­ber, 2011 marked the first elec­tion cycle in more than a decade in which the peo­ple of King Coun­ty did not turn any incum­bent port com­mis­sion­ers out of office. I think vot­ers have rec­og­nized that the Mic Dins­more era — a sad and shame­ful chap­ter in the his­to­ry of the Port of Seat­tle — is over. The Port’s new lead­er­ship (of which Gael is a part) has improved the Port’s busi­ness prac­tices, intro­duced new mea­sures to ensure account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy, and strength­ened ties to oth­er local governments.

The Port still has work to do. It espe­cial­ly needs to lessen its envi­ron­men­tal foot­print and help lead the cleanup of the Duwamish Riv­er. Thank­ful­ly, it is now in a posi­tion where it can begin mak­ing progress on those issues. Dur­ing the Dins­more days, it was­n’t, and we are extreme­ly thank­ful that those days are behind us.