RICHARD CAREAGA_

Unexpected Detour on the Way to What I Was Hired to Do

In the late 70s, the State of Alaska was awash in oil revenues and was looking to invest in local infrastructure improvements. However, only the few large urban areas had the institutional capacity to mount capital improvement programs. The state determined to fund staff additions to the smaller municipalities to remedy that shortcoming. I was hired as the first planning director of the City of Unalaska, the westernmost incorporated place in the United States, in the Aleutian Island Chain.

When I arrived in 1980, the town had grown from a population of 270 a decade before to 2,000 year-round residents with seasonal peaks of 4,000. By dollar volume landed it was the leading fishing port in the country, based on King Crab. The community lacked adequate infrastructure across the board. There was no sewer system. The municipal water system was a wood stave relic of the military installations of World War II. There was no central electrical power generation, no public dock, solid waste disposal was an open dump, and there was no pavement, even for the 4,000 foot runway served by a quonset hut for a terminal. And there was not even any basemap on which to display existing and needed facilities.

These were exactly the shortcomings that I was hired to help address.

There were, however, obstacles that money alone could not fix. These were institutional. The governance was of the council-manager form; however, the effective model was that anything said without contradiction by a council member had the force of law. Such official records as existed were largely chronicles of what was said, not enacted, at meeting. It was no wonder that the circuit magistrate was unwilling to enforce municipal law that was based on oral tradition.

More serious, however, was the state of municipal finance operations. The city treasurer made sure to keep the city's cash in non-interest bearing deposits of at least $1 million because of reliance on outside auditors to balance the checking accounts during the annual audit. The municipal budget was in disarray. Car batteries for the police department were charged to electric utility operations. Because batteries produce electricity. The bi-monthly payroll for the city's 150 employees was processed by hand and required the city treasurer and city clerk plus two clerks a full week to complete each cycle. It quickly became clear that no grant funding would be forthcoming while the city was unable to account for it.

To overcome this, I went to the city manager with a proposal to convert city operations to electronic data processing and, with his support, obtained an appropriate of $100,000 (about $325,000 adjusted for inflation). With that I purchased an IBM System 34 mini-mainframe, line printer, four terminals and payroll, general ledger, budgeting and text editing software. Within six months of my arrival, a junior clerk required only a half-day twice a month to put out payroll. Within a year, a model code of ordinances was tailored to local conditions and adopted, the Council was adopting formal resolutions to make clear its actions. And I created a detailed municipal chart of accounts for budget and general ledger purposes. I then recruited a finance director to take over ongoing operations.

I was now freed to pursue the primary purpose for which I was hired. Even if I had to learn to be an IT department and a treasurer to do it.