ECUA, District 5

There are three ECUA, District 5 candidates looking for votes in the August primary election. Incumbent Larry Walker will go up against challengers Barry Tweedie and Charlou Williams; all three candidates are Republicans. There is no challenger awaiting the primary winner in November.

Barry Tweedie

Barry Tweedie isn’t satisfied with the Escambia County Utilities Authority board’s current lineup, or some decisions the group has made. He believes he can do a better job.

“I’d like to substitute my judgement for the incumbent’s judgement,” Tweedie said.

One of the candidate’s primary concerns has been the board’s decision to increase rates. Tweedie thinks board members have lost touch with what constitute legitimate expenses— “they got jaded to the millions of dollars”—and have gone beyond what is necessary.

“I wouldn’t vote for a rate increase that exceeded the cost of living,” he said, explaining that fixed-income customers would not be able to shoulder such increases.

Looking to the future, the candidate considers the switch to a Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) fleet of trucks to be an important issue before the ECUA board. He’s not entirely excited about the move—painting it as a cost concern.

“They borrowed the money to do that,” Tweedie said. “They say they’ll save $900,000 a year in total, and that’s great, but they’ll have to spend $1.4 million on debt service—that’s $500,000 in the wrong direction.”

The candidate is also interested in the sale of the ECUA’s downtown property. He’s heard talk that there may be plans to sell the property to the city of Pensacola for $19 million—an amount the candidate says the city already owes in conjunction with the old treatment plant’s relocation.

“In other words, we just give’em the land,” he said. “And it’s not going to happen.”

Tweedie said he would also be concerned if the ECUA entered into an arrangement in which it took over the city’s sanitation department in exchange for the property.

“There are, I suspect, a lot of unfunded liabilities in conjunction with ECUA taking over the sanitation from the city,” he said.

The candidate said that, if elected, he plans to press for selling the property and using the income from the sale to the benefit of ECUA customers. It’s a point he’d make clear.

“To sort of throw some water in the face of staff—that’s not a gift,” he said.
Tweedie’s background traverses variable terrain. He’s spent time in the military and worked in the private sector.

At the age of 17, the candidate entered the Army. After paratrooper training, Tweedie was sent to Vietnam.

Following his time in the service, the candidate worked construction jobs and drove trucks. He later enlisted in the Navy, and then worked as a director in a survival school in northern Maine.

In 1987, Tweedie was involved in an automobile accident that broke his back.

“I’m a C-5,6,7 quadriplegic,” he said, shrugging off the condition— “I maintain that as long as I have sound judgement, I don’t believe my physical impairment is an impediment.”

Larry Walker

Incumbent Larry Walker isn’t looking to exit the ECUA’s District 5 seat. He feels he still has work to do.

“There’s no way around it,” the candidate said recently, “we’re gonna have to do it.”

The work that must be done involves repairing the authority’s aging infrastructure in order to deal with the inflow of stormwater into its pipes.

“The biggest issue facing ECUA that we must face is the amount of stormwater discharged into our sewer line,” Walker said. “We’re gonna have to do it and it’s going to cost a lot of money.”

Walker said that, as per an EPA mandate, the ECUA has 16 years to repair its system. This will require, he said, inevitable—and annual—rate increases for customers.

“We’re going to have to look at something like 10 percent rate increases [annually],” he said. “And that’s something I don’t like talking about before the election.”

Why would someone want to stay on the board as it heads down a long road of rate increases?

“I wanna be part of it because its something that’s necessary for the betterment of our community—not just a federal mandate,” Walker said.

The candidate holds a Ph.D. in political science. He’s spent 40 years as a college professor, 29 years of which was with the University of West Florida.

Walker was born “in the hills of north Alabama.”

“When I was 7-years-old we moved closer to town where there was electricity,” he recalled.

In the early 1960s, Walker was among the very first Peace Corps. volunteers—“I’m very proud of that.”

As for the high points of his time on the ECUA board, the candidate points to the relocation of the the authority’s downtown treatment facility. He said he had a lot of “pride” in his involvement in the process.

“If we’d still been using the old Main Street plant when that 15 inches of rain came, we’d of had no choice but to let the sewage run through the plant and into the bay,” Walker said.

Charlou Williams

Charlou Williams had some questions. Maybe if she wins the District 5 ECUA seat she can get some answers.

“Last year when they increased the rates and I couldn’t get any answers about why the rates were increased and couldn’t get answers about a lot of things … I became concerned,” the candidate said.

Williams, who has an accounting background, isn’t sure the numbers add up for the ECUA. She wonders how much various construction associated with the new plant costs and why rates were increased when the authority possesses what she termed “a large amount of surplus.”

“I think we need to look at their budget,” Williams said.

If elected, the candidate plans on being fairly involved.

“I would prefer the ECUA would be more of a board—a deciding board—instead of just doing what staff tells them to do,” Williams explained.

Williams spent 20 years in Miami working as a government contractor. Locally, she has worked for the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, the Escambia County Clerk of Court and the public defenders office. Currently, Williams is the director of payroll for Wade Wilson CPA.