Most of the 180,000-plus customers of Clark Public Utilities likely have never met Mick Shutt.
But they’ve probably heard his voice.
Shutt has served as Clark’s public spokesman for 32 years. Besides explaining everything from routine power outages to the intricacies of the Northwest electric grid to news reporters, Shutt, 62, has lent his voice to the utility’s radio advertising spots. He will go off the air for good at the end of this year.
“He’s kind of one in a million, in my estimation,” said PUD Commissioner Byron Hanke, who, as a utility manager, hired Shutt in 1978. “And he’s certainly proved his ability by the longevity that he’s enjoyed.”
Shutt started out as a radio news reporter in his hometown, Wenatchee. After several moves and job changes, Shutt landed in Southwest Washington. His baritone voice has resonated here on radio and television commercials ever since.
Shutt takes responsibility for instigating the utility’s presence on public airwaves.
At the time he was hired, the utility’s public outreach amounted to a 4-by-5-inch newspaper ad that ran every Friday.
“Being a radio guy, I thought we needed to do some other stuff,” he said.
Informational ads
Critics have questioned over the years why a business with a built-in customer base — essentially anyone who uses electricity — advertises at all.
Shutt said the utility focuses on informational advertising that largely revolves around energy efficiency and conservation. In fact, as a public utility, Clark is in the curious position of encouraging its customers to consume less of the product it sells. By tamping down long-term energy demand, the theory goes, the utility minimizes the need to build expensive new power plants.
Shutt’s tenure was bracketed by twin power supply crises.
He started with the utility as the Washington Public Power Supply System plowed ahead with an ill-fated venture into building a series of five nuclear power plants. The enterprise crumbled under the weight of cost overruns and sagging demand, ending with the completion of one plant and the largest municipal bond default in U.S. history at that time.
Twenty years later, market manipulation fed a crisis that caused energy rates to skyrocket in 2000 and 2001. Clark boosted rates by 45 percent and continues to pay back $100 million to cover an ill-timed two-month gap between the end of Clark’s previous power-supply contract and a new one with the Bonneville Power Administration.
“That, and the WPPSS crisis, were in the news almost every day,” Shutt said.
Positive relationships
When he retires at the end of December, Shutt will no longer be the one explaining local impacts of the increasingly complex energy landscape to reporters and the public. He looks forward to spending more time with his two grown children, Kari and Eric, who both live in the Seattle area.
Hanke credits Shutt with seamlessly forging positive relationships with a wide variety of personality types over the years — from demanding utility managers to reporters pressed for time to customers upset with their bills.
Tom Ryll, a former Columbian reporter who covered the utility for almost as long as Shutt worked for it, reflected on Shutt’s tenure.
“I was thinking about all the interactions with him over the years — a lot, when you think about it — and was struck by how relatively benign it was,” Ryll noted. “Which of course is what made him so good at his job.”
Shutt’s accessibility also made him a favorite of reporters.
In early 2009, he fielded an after-hours call on his cell phone from a reporter looking for information about a fairly routine power failure. Within minutes, Shutt called back with the number of customers affected and the cause of the problem. Unbeknownst to the reporter, Shutt did all this while standing on the beach in Maui.
It was his honeymoon.
His second wife, Ligaya Cayabyab, said she always knew that late-night or early-morning calls are part of the package in marrying Mick Shutt.
