Made up of five elected members, the Austin Utilities Board of Commissioners has existed since 1903, when the city charter separated the duties of watching over the water and electric utilities from those of the City Council, in order to take the politics out of the decision-making as well as to allow a group to focus specifically on issues concerned with utilities.

Wednesday, November 01, 2000

Made up of five elected members, the Austin Utilities Board of Commissioners has existed since 1903, when the city charter separated the duties of watching over the water and electric utilities from those of the City Council, in order to take the politics out of the decision-making as well as to allow a group to focus specifically on issues concerned with utilities.

Voters will see the names of four men in the race for Austin Utilities Board of Commissioners on Nov. 7, but there won’t be a contest unless a last minute write-in campaign is mounted. There are four seats open on the board.

Two of the four candidates – Tom Baudler and Larry Pfeil – already sit on the board because they were appointed by the mayor when vacancies opened on the board between elections.

Pfeil, Baudler and Paul Johnson all are seeking four-year positions on the board; Frank Lorenzen is running for a two-year seat. Here is where each candidate stands on the issues:

Paul Johnson

Paul is married to Bonnie. The couple have two children, Sarah, 23, who lives in Minneapolis, and son, Adam, a junior at Winona State University. Paul Johnson, an architect and owner of Paul Johnson Architects Inc., has lived in Austin more than 40 years.

He is running for a seat on the board for three reasons: from a desire to continue to make Austin a great place to live and work; because he enjoys serving in capacities that can benefit from his expertise and experience and because he has worked with the utility board in the past and was impressed with the commissioners’ dedication.

Johnson believes the primary duties of the utilities board is as a "policy" board that assures the best "product" can be offered to the customers and the community. If elected, he would hope to continue to develop and implement plans for the future to ensure the positive growth and efficiency of Austin Utilities.

Although he deferred a question on deregulation pending further education on the issue, Johnson said he would emphasize two priorities while serving on the board: to investigate ways to enhance the current utility programs while maintaining the existing excellent service and to serve Austin Utilities and its customers to the best of his ability.

Larry Pfeil

Larry and his wife Teri have five children: Scott, Sarah, Stephen, Seth and Shawn. The oldest, Scott, is a stock analyst in Wisconsin, three are at university and the youngest, Shawn, is a freshman at Pacelli High School.

Pfeil, a registered professional engineer, has 29 years experience with the Hormel Foods Corp. where he is vice president of engineering.

He is running because of a belief that people should try to serve the community in the best way they can, and, with his technical resources and management skills, he believes he has much to offer the Austin Utilities board.

Pfeil sees his primary duty as a utilities commissioner to provide input on strategic and policy decisions that help ensure Austin Utilities is providing reliable utilities at the lowest possible cost while maintaining a high level of customer service. Reliability is his top priority for the municipal utility, which he says should continually strive to become more efficient in all aspects of the business.

As for electrical deregulation, Pfeil said he’s still gathering information as to what effects it might have on Austin, but he believes that Austin Utilities can compete on "an even playing field."

"Somehow we need to incentify firms to construct generation capacity," Pfeil said. "Virtually no capacity is being constructed and we in Minnesota are only about five years away from experiencing shortages."

Tom Baudler

Tom and his wife Lisa, a Spanish instructor at Riverland Community College, have three children: Natalie, 11; Ingrid, 8, and Tony, 4. Baudler has been an attorney with Baudler, Baudler, Maus and Blahnik since 1987.

He chose to serve on the board both from a sense of public service and an appreciation for the important role the board has in the community, but also because his father, Richard Baudler, began his years of service on the board more than 30 years ago and died last year.

For Tom Baudler, the duties of the utilities board are changing and will change even more in a deregulated environment. With the advent of deregulation in the future, Baudler sees the role of the board as policymaker and overseer in the background switching to a more active role in order to keep Austin Utilities competitive.

"That means more interaction with employees, management and customers," he said. "It also means understanding all levels of the business and pursuing policies which will ensure Austin Utilities is not left at a competitive disadvantage. The board must maintain flexibility to respond to external changes that are inevitable in a deregulated environment."

Preparing for deregulation while continuing to provide customers with safe, reliable utilities in an environmentally and financially responsible manner would be Baudler’s No. 1 priority.

Although he is preparing for it, Baudler does not see deregulation being of benefit to the majority of customers at Austin Utilities, particularly the residential users. He noted that he was pleased to see that the Minnesota attorney general has taken the position that Minnesota should be slow to jump into a deregulated environment.

Frank Lorenzen

Frank Lorenzen and his wife Karen have three children: David, 18, Emily, 16, and Hannah, 6. Lorenzen, who hails from Grand Meadow originally, moved to Austin with his family in 1983 after taking a job as a design engineer for Akkerman Inc. in Brownsdale. He is now senior project engineer at Akkerman, a company that manufactures and supplies trenchless equipment worldwide.

His background with Akkerman is part of the reason Lorenzen is running for the board. The Brownsdale company supplies the equipment to contractors, which allows them to install gravity sewers, electrical utilities and communications systems below ground with limited above-ground disturbance.

"My work experience would be a valuable asset to this board," Lorenzen said. "I have 18 years of experience in designing equipment for trenchless utility installations."

Lorenzen also is interested in learning more about the operations of Austin’s municipal utility, and believes that the primary duties of a utilities commissioner are to establish policies that are required to run the utility effectively and efficiently and to bring private and public concerns to the board’s attention for discussion. While on the board, he will emphasize that new policies put in place will consider long-term effect of operations.

As for deregulation, Lorenzen doesn’t think the information is available at this time to make a sound decision. He pointed out that many utilities in the Midwest are waiting to see what problems and issues arise from the deregulation on the West Coast.