The Natural: Grand Forks’ Pat Owens

Pat Owens ran for mayor of Grand Forks, N.D., because she decided she wanted to be recognized for work she was already doing. As secretary and administrative assistant to the town’s previous four mayors, Owens’ was the face most of Grand Forks’ 52,000 residents associated with City Hall. So, in 1996, Owens ran for the position and won in a landslide. (She had to take a pay cut since the mayor’s job is a part-time position.)

It didn’t figure to be that difficult. The town is small by most standards and has the small-town reputation that inspires residents to say “Nothing much happens here” and mean it as a good thing. Besides, Owens says, she’d practically been doing the mayor’s work for more than 30 years. It was one of those “How tough can it be?” things.

That was in June 1996. In winter, it began to snow seriously; eight blizzards dumped more than 100 inches of snow on Grand Forks and on East Grand Forks, across the state line in Minnesota. Grand Forks, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was in the middle of a flood protection planning process when the realization set in that the plan would be inadequate in the face of a really big flood. (That plan was abandoned, and a new one now is in the works.)

The flood began on April 18, when the Red River, at a record 54-plus feet, poured over the city’s dikes. By the next day, most of the city, as well as East Grand Forks, was under water. Huge electrical fires spawned by the flood finished off what the waters didn’t destroy.

Prior to the flood, a $17 million cost overrun on Grand Forks’ new events center was the worst of Owens’ problems. Now, with her town in ruins around her, Owens, a 57-year-old, 5-foot-tall grandmother, did what any grandmother would do: She sympathized, she listened, she cried, she hugged.

Then she did what great leaders do. She made hard decisions (including the controversial decision to evacuate the town), she cajoled, she bullied. “She has won the respect of everybody,” said former City Council President Tom Hagness in a newspaper article. “That wasn’t an easy thing to do, standing up at that meeting and telling people they should evacuate. But at the end of the meeting, they clapped for her. And those were the people affected.”

Her efforts on behalf of her town have made national news. And they have made her American City & County’s Municipal Leader of the Year.

A Constant Reassurance A year and a half after the worst flood in its existence, Grand Forks is on its way to recovery, largely because of the efforts of its mayor. “I’ve worked disasters for nine years,” says Ed Conley, who managed Grand Forks’ satellite disaster field office for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “And I’ve never seen more unsolicited support come in. Pat became such a familiar figure and such a heroic figure. That’s one of the reasons Grand Forks got so much in donations. The strength she showed really resonated with people.”

And it propelled Owens into the national spotlight. She appeared on “Today,” and “Good Morning America” and, along with Julia Roberts, Celine Dion and Madeleine Albright (among others), was listed as one of the Most Fascinating Women of ’97 by Ladies Home Journal.

Newspapers gushed. “Pat Owens wears her heart and soul on a flood-dirtied sleeve,” read an editorial in the Fargo (N.D.) Forum. “It’s a good fit. She’s doing a good job in very tough circumstances.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune added, “She has been a constant reassurance to her constituency.”

Owens, however, is not comfortable being the center of attention. She had, after all, planned on serving out her term in relative anonymity. “I don’t know that she likes all the attention,” Conley says. “She’s a very unpretentious person.”

“I would come home and sit down and think, ‘My goodness, I just spent the day with [President Clinton,]'” says Owens, whose surprise at the hoopla she helped generate is genuine. “My goodness” peppers her speech, and she retains a sense of wonder that anyone would be interested in her. “My goodness,” she says, “do you know I was on ‘Good Morning America?'”

Moments later, Owens apologizes, “I’m sorry. I’m not very interesting.” According to the people who worked closely with her during what became known as Flood Fight ’97, that would depend on the definition of “interesting.”

“If I had to sit down and write out a list of the 10 most heroic people I know, Pat would be on it,” says Col. Mike Wonsik, the Army Corps of Engineers’ St. Paul District Engineer during the flood. “She’s a joy to work with. In a community like Grand Forks, which is still a small town trying to become a city, there’s a tradition of consensus government. It’s tough to be the mayor.”

“In every big disaster, someone emerges who just becomes the symbol of the future of the community,” Conley says. “She became that person. She had this great empathy and instinctive knowledge of what needed to be done.”

Empathy and instinct are fine qualities in a mayor, but they don’t pay the bills, and Grand Forks was looking at a huge amount of money to rebuild. Additionally, analysts estimate that the city has lost about 2,000 residents, nearly 4 percent of its population, because of destroyed homes and lost job opportunities.

Getting those people back is a major undertaking. Owens is determined to do just that, and that determination is paying off.

“If she didn’t have the optimistic outlook that she’s got, I don’t know if there’d be a lot of people who would want to come back and try to rebuild this community,” said one displaced resident in a Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune story.

Hometown Girl Makes Good Rebuilding Greater Grand Forks is something of a crusade for Owens, who, with the exception of a year in Greenville, S.C., has lived there all her life. She was born and raised on a farm in East Grand Forks that is still occupied by her 94-year-old father, Willard Guerard. (After refusing to leave his pets, Guerard was helicoptered to safety during the flood.)

A devout Catholic (“Sister Adelaide taught me the ins and outs of business,” the mayor says), Owens married at 17. She and her husband, Bobby, recently celebrated their 40th anniversary.

She began her business career waiting tables, then worked as secretary of buildings and grounds for the local school district. A job as a steno clerk in the auditor’s office brought her to City Hall initially. Owens moved into the mayor’s office in 1964, serving as a “secretary” for 16 years (“doing basically the city manager’s job,” she says) before her title was changed to “assistant to the mayor.”

When Owens’ predecessor, Mike Polovitz, decided not to seek re-election, he encouraged her to give it a shot. She won with 77 percent of the vote. “I gave up a $47,000 a year job for a $12,000 a year job,” she notes, wryly.

Down-home Appeal The down-home appeal that makes Owens so popular in Grand Forks helped her open the wallets of some of the country’s most tight-fisted lawmakers. Making the rounds in Washington, Owens pried loose $171.6 million in Community Development Block Grant money to help Grand Forks rebuild. She also got the federal government to kick in more than $1 billion for buyouts and relocations of homes, businesses and schools; money for farmers who lost livestock; and money for infrastructure repair (including the town’s sewer system, which was particularly hard-hit.)

In fact, North Dakota’s Democratic Senator Kent Conrad credited Owens with changing the minds of veteran politicians wary of spending money. Long-time Grand Forks City Councilmember Eliot Glassheim agrees. “We believe that the federal money we got was the result of two things: the spectacular fire that made the national news and Pat Owens,” he says. “Her presentation of the situation moved people.”

And she’s not through with Washington yet. Grand Forks and East Grand Forks are working on a levee project that would help prevent future disasters. The two towns are planning to kick in $52 million for the $300 million-plus project. Owens and East Grand Forks Mayor Lynn Stauss will ask the state to match that. That leaves nearly $200 million that the two mayors are hoping Congress will appropriate through the Water Resources Development Act, now under consideration. The two have done some serious lobbying on behalf of the bill.

It’s all paying off for Greater Grand Forks. Slowly, but surely, downtown is coming back. The Grand Forks Herald, which burned to the ground during the flood and still managed to receive a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the disaster, has just moved into a spectacular new building. A new Corporate Center is under construction, and the transformation of the old Empire Theater into the Empire Arts Center is complete. Altogether, more than 160 businesses now are open downtown, and, although that’s down considerably from the pre-flood 315, it’s still reason for optimism.

Helped along by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban Land Institute and Atelier Heamavihio, a Fargo-based urban design consulting firm, the Mayor’s Task Force on Business Redevelopment has put together a plan for downtown development. The plan identifies five key elements – greenways, beacons to mark the Red River, town squares for both Grand Forks and East Grand Forks, a corporate/ financial district and a cultural district – for the area’s new downtown.

Ironically, as the town improves, Owens has less fun being mayor. “It was so much easier being the mayor back then [during the flood],” she told the Associated Press. “There are so many more battles to fight now.”

“She’s working too hard – 15 hour days, seven days a week,” Glassheim says. “She doesn’t sleep enough. The demands are endless. There are 195 homes in the way of the levee that the Corps of Engineers says have to go. She’s caught between what she thinks is good for the city and an informed, determined and vocal minority fighting to protect their homes.

“When she was assistant to the mayor, 15 people would call every day with little problems, and she solved them all,” Glassheim says. “Then she would go home and feel good. This division within the city is bothering her.”

It is not, however, changing her. Owens still is, as one observer says, “the most accessible mayor I’ve ever seen, much more accessible than big-city mayors.” That may keep her from sleeping as much as she’d like, but it also gives the citizens of Grand Forks a hands-on mayor to lead their rebuilding efforts. For Grand Forks, the trade-off seems like a bargain.

Colorado Springs, Colo., has grown in population by nearly 27 percent during the past decade, considerably increasing the traffic volume. Nearby Pikes Peak, a popular tourist attraction, adds to that congestion. In response, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has begun expanding the main north-south route through the city, Interstate 25. As a part of the project, CDOT will install aesthetically pleasing sound barriers that will not clash with the surrounding mountains.

Interstate 25 opened nearly 40 years ago, and the 30-mile stretch that runs through Colorado Springs is at 150 percent of recommended capacity. Consequently, CDOT has embarked on a five-year, $176 million highway improvement program. The project includes construction of a 2.5-mile sound wall on the west side of the interstate, adjacent to an historic neighborhood.

From the outset, CDOT planners had three main objectives: * the sound wall would be constructed before the highway improvements would begin; * planners would solicit feedback from residents on what the wall should look like (its materials, design, colors and dimensions); and * the department would complete the wall project within budget and in a timely fashion. Sound barriers typically are erected at the completion of a roadway project, but CDOT was concerned about the effect of construction on nearby residents. “We made a commitment to the residents along I-25 to mitigate the noise levels [while we were building the road],” says Dave Poling, the department’s I-25 project manager.

Prior to construction of the sound barrier, residents expressed concerns that the wall would look drab and ugly, according to Randall Cumley, construction manager for Wilson & Co., the Albuquerque, N.M.-based engineering/design firm that manages the I-25 corridor project. “The residents were clear in telling us that they wanted something different, something they could be proud of,” he says. During public meetings and in neighborhood workshops, residents requested that: * the wall appear as a natural extension of the neighborhood and the mountain scenery and be high enough to protect the neighborhood from traffic noise; * a greenway on the residents’ side of the wall incorporate a Victorian design to complement the neighborhood’s historic nature, and that there be room for future gardens, playlots for children, parking for visitors and security; and * the residents’ side include a 10-foot-wide walking/biking trail to connect with the city’s system of recreational trails and sidewalks.

Concrete was chosen for the wall because it needed to be durable enough to weather years of exposure to the elements and still remain safe, strong and attractive. SEMA Construction, Englewood, Colo., the project’s construction contractor, cast the concrete wall panels, in cooperation with Transit Mix, a Colorado Springs ready-mix concrete producer. Bayferrox synthetic iron oxide pigments made by Pittsburgh-based Bayer were used to achieve the wall’s earthtone color, which was a critical ingredient in the overall design.

The design plan called for the wall to be situated 30 feet west of the highway and a minimum of 50 feet from neighborhood homes. On the freeway side, designers used various patterns to capture the character of nearby Mesa Springs Creek, mountain valleys and rock outcrops.

The wall required more than 1,000 concrete panels, each of which is 30 feet long and 8 inches thick. After curing, an anti-graffiti sealant was applied to each panel. Then, the panels were trucked to the construction site and inserted into I-beam steel support columns.

To conceal the I-beams, precast covers using the same design and color were welded into place, giving the wall a seamless look. For most of its length, the wall measures 15 feet high, although it ranges from 7 to 21 feet, depending on the elevation and proximity of the highway.

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is responsible for a state highway system that includes more than 9,500 miles of roadway. Several years ago, the department shifted its priorities from new highway construction and expansion to preservation, repair and maintenance of existing highways.

While that change in strategy was taking place, MDOT’s workload increased, its staff levels were reduced, and its antiquated information system proved less and less worthy as time went on. MDOT set out to analyze its preconstruction planning process and redesign its scheduling procedures to reduce costs and increase productivity.

“We were developing program schedules (for repairs and maintenance) based on professional estimates. But, since we had no way to forecast or factor in current workloads, available resources and the changing priorities of departments, it was difficult to adhere to those schedules,” says Jim Hicks, MDOT program/ project management system (P/PMS) engineer. “Most smaller projects were completed on time, but the more complex projects too often were delayed and over budget.”

MDOT decided to develop and implement a P/PMS to enable managers to plan, schedule, monitor and control highway programs, projects and resources. More timely and effective allocation of available funds was a key objective, as were making optimum use of available resources, consistently meeting project schedules and completion dates, and ensuring high-quality delivery.

The new P/PMS had to be able to summarize information on all projects and programs; accurately catalog resources; identify requirements for realistic scheduling; and monitor project status and costs. The P/PMS also would need to have sufficient capacity to handle data volumes for at least 2,000 active projects, along with the power to analyze all project schedules simultaneously.

In 1993, MDOT awarded the P/PMS development contract to Robbins-Gioia, an Alexandria, Va.-based firm specializing in program management services. During the next 12 months, officials from MDOT and the firm developed and tested software, managed the system’s implementation and trained employees. As part of the implementation process, MDOT upgraded its computer hardware, selecting a UNIX-based client/server system consisting of a SunSparc server and PC workstations from Sun Microsystems, Mountain View, Calif.

Since the system went online, its primary users have been project managers and the statewide Transportation Planning Division, which plans, monitors and manages projects and their associated costs. Other users include program managers and work center unit managers. With the P/PMS, MDOT is realizing significant cost savings because of reduced time spent on project management. In fiscal year 1996, for example, the 219 completed projects resulted in a total savings of 17,082 hours, or about $854,100.

“We expect that project managers and others will be spending more time on production work and less time inputting or updating data,” Hicks says. He notes that users are benefiting from the ability to analyze the impact of their decisions in terms of a single project or an overall program. Communications also have become more open between work units and upper management, thus improving overall performance in meeting project deadlines.

The system’s standardized approach to planning, scheduling, reporting and tracking work is providing stability and reducing the time required to process jobs. In the past, developing a good project schedule with network templates and the network generator could take a project manager as long as two weeks, but now the task can be accomplished in 20 minutes.

“With the previous system, we were handling the same number of projects, but we did not have the ability to track them,” Hicks says. “Today, we have the tool to more effectively handle those jobs.”