Q&A with new director of public works

After eight months, the city of Blaine has found a permanent public works director.

Bernie Ziemianek was hired by city manager Michael Jones to take over the position and began working for the city in December. 

The position was vacated in April when former director Ravyn Whitewolf was appointed to be the city’s engineering program director. For the past several months, Bob Hammond had been serving as interim director.  

Ziemianek was most recently the transmissions and distributions operations manager at Seattle City Light. He has also held positions as the public utility director in Ukiah, California and director of research for the Electrical Power Research Institute. He holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from Drexel University and a master’s degree in business administration from Duke University. 

Ziemianek spoke with The Northern Light about his plans for the department and his new life in Blaine. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.  

What made you want to take the job in Blaine after so long in Seattle?

I’ve been in this business 40 years, a number of them at Seattle City Light, and when it came time to settle down, my wife and I chose to move to Semiahmoo. Then all of a sudden, the public works director position opened. When we were looking for a place to live, no matter where I ended up, I thought maybe there is a small community somewhere I could give back to. I enjoy what I do and they had a need and so I thought it was a good match.  

What are some of the goals you are hoping to accomplish in your position?

The staff in the department is great. As I look at it, Blaine is unique in a way. It has some expensive, I will call them crown jewel-type assets, with the wastewater treatment center, the electric system and everything else. They are in somewhat good shape. My goals are set on maintaining those assets and providing the best possible customer service to the residents. I also have my staff focused on what projects have been done and what hasn’t been done.

The Northern Light previously reported on the city’s electrical problems in the fall, which led to outages in east Blaine near 8th Street. What can you say about repairing those systems? 

The feeders themselves are not necessarily backed up by each other. There is not a lot of flexibility to switch circuits and keep the power on if one goes out. The flexibility we have is running around the city closing and opening various volt switches to restore as much power as we can. What we want to do is install a number of switches on the feeders so we could be switching right away if an outage happens.  

What are some projects you are working on right now and throughout 2021?

Right now, we have been working on an electrical flexibility project to reduce potential outage times, like the one from October, by adding a number of switches. There are also a number of sewer projects. We are working with consultants to prevent bottlenecks and clear units for developers. There are also a number of transit projects in the works. 

Will Covid-19 slow down the department going forward?

Yes, it will slow down our work, especially for larger projects that are still in discussion. Our staff is taking all the precautions, and video conferencing has worked well for us, but we’re isolated. It hasn’t been too disruptive but it has slowed us down. We have yet to see a lot of backlog, but we are able to do a little less work per day. So far, we haven’t seen slowdown for any project specifically. It has been pretty equal across the board.