Hosted by the PNCWA Utility Management Committee

Date & Time:  July 26, 2023 @ Noon to 1 PM

Panel Speakers:  Linda De Boldt, Bellevue Utilities Assistant Director; Ben Marré, Seattle Public Utilities Drainage & Wastewater Planning & Program Management Division Director; John McClellan, Alderwood Water, and Wastewater District General Manager; and Emily Moon, City of Issaquah Public Works Director

Moderated By:  Gary Schimek, Blue Cypress Consulting 

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About the Panel:

Are you losing sleep over existing staffing vacancies and retaining great staff? Do you not know where to turn for collegial advice?  If you answered yes to these two questions, then we have a great event for you to attend.  We have four amazing speakers that are dealing with hiring and retention issues in real time.  They will share their personal experiences about the challenges they are facing but also talk about, if you can believe it, opportunities they see amid the chaos.  They will also share unique solutions they have employed to weather the storm.

Our panel members are Linda De Boldt, Bellevue Utilities Assistant Director; Ben Marré, Seattle Public Utilities Drainage & Wastewater Planning & Program Management Division Director; John McClellan, Alderwood Water, and Wastewater District General Manager; and Emily Moon, City of Issaquah Public Works Director.

• The facilitator will be Gary Schimek with Blue Cypress Consulting who has 25 years of public service experience in the Pacific Northwest.
• Linda DeBoldt is the Assistant Director of Bellevue Utilities, overseeing the Utility’s Engineering Division. Her division delivers Bellevue’s Capital Improvement Program for drinking water, stormwater, and wastewater infrastructure; this includes system and program planning, design, project management, and construction of Utility projects. Her division also performs development review, permitting, and inspection for the utility elements of private development projects. Linda has 40 years of public works experience and has previously worked for Redmond Public Works and Seattle Public Utilities in numerous engineering and leadership positions. She graduated from the University of Washington in 1983 with a degree in Civil Engineering and is a licensed P.E. in Washington State.
• Ben Marré is the Drainage & Wastewater Planning &Program Management Division Director for Seattle Public Utilities. Ben Marré’s team is guiding Seattle’s water future. He leads planners, landscape architects, scientists, and engineers who implement an approximately $200M annual capital program, oversee Duwamish and Lake Union superfund cleanups, manage regulatory requirements, develop equitable and just policies and programs, and plan for the next 50 years of stormwater and wastewater investment.
• John McClellan is a licensed professional engineer with a long career in the public sector, including 15 years with Everett Public Works. John joined the Alderwood District in November of 2017 as Engineering and Development Director, and in addition to currently serving as the General Manager, also volunteers as the chair of King County’s Metropolitan Water Pollution Abatement Advisory Committee.
• Emily Moon is a credentialed city manager who began serving as the City of Issaquah’s Public Works Director in September 2022. Prior to that, she served local governments in Colorado, Connecticut, and Washington in city management capacities and had an amazing opportunity to take a worldwide family sabbatical just prior to the global pandemic. She is a graduate of the University of Oregon’s Honors College and the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Emily has a passion for building remarkable teams that are vital ingredients to ensuring excellent quality of life in our communities.