I wrote a little bit this morning about the context behind the port’s decision to hunt for an “executive director” rather than a CEO to head up the Port of Seattle, and this afternoon, the Port Commission finally voted in their pick: retired US Coast Guard Rear Admiral Stephen Metruck.
Metruck, 57, is relocating from Washington D.C. with his wife in order to take the job, which has a starting salary of $350,000. This isn’t his first stint in Seattle. Metruck was commander of Sector Puget Sound between 2005 and 2008, and told me this afternoon that his goal, after he settles in, is to climb to the top of Mount Rainier.
More stuff to know about Metruck that hopefully distinguishes him more from his private sector predecessors: He got a Master’s in public administration from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He served as a Congressional fellow to US Senator John Kerry and as a Coast Guard liaison to the United Nations. Metruck was also a member of the Coast Guard’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Task Force between 2011 and 2014, a group that set out to “create a culture intolerant of sexual assault and behaviors that enable it.” In 2014, the Coast Guard began requiring annual sexual assault prevention trainings for all Coast Guard members. Metruck also served on the Coast Guard Academy’s Board of Trustees, where, according to the port, he “oversaw significant increases in the diversity of the student body.”
Port commissioners all had enthusiastic things to say about Metruck, particularly port commissioner Fred Felleman, who said he had worked with Metruck while he was sector commander in 2008.
“My relationship with the Coast Guard has been varied over the years,” Felleman, an environmental consultant, said. He added that he had worked with at least 10 captains of the port on environmental issues, “and this one truly stands out as one of the bright lights of the whole organization.” Felleman also praised Metruck’s experience in ocean science (a bachelor of science in ocean engineering from the US Coast Guard Academy) and called him “basically an oceanographer.”
“He’s not an airport guy,” Felleman said. “But get over it.”
Port commissioner Courtney Gregoire emphasized the increased diversity of recruits that the Coast Guard Academy board of directors oversaw during Metruck’s tenure as well as his experience on the sexual assault task force.
“You show what it means to tackle difficult issues and that’s going to be very helpful here,” Gregoire told Metruck.
I had a chance to speak with Metruck after today’s port commission meeting, and asked him what he thought about the fact that, last year, only 5.3 percent of the port’s contracts went to women and minority-owned businesses.
“I think the numbers should represent the community,” Metruck said. “That’s the goal, and I think within that, the port should take a look at what the numbers are, what the goals are, and developing strategies, including policies set by the commission, in order to address those.”
I also asked Metruck whether he thought port police made the right call to ask Sound Transit to stop service to the Sea-Tac light rail station during the travel ban protests in January. (The Coast Guard played a significant role in the Shell protests back in 2015, but I didn’t see any use of force in those protests like the kind we saw from port police in January.) He said he couldn’t talk about that as he wasn’t there, but did offer these thoughts on the right to protest in general:
“Protest, that’s part of that which makes this nation great, so you want to be able to do it in a way that’s safe for everyone and secure for those operations,” Metruck said. “I’ll be looking for how do you give options for people to protest, but protects the safety and security of everyone involved.”
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