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Seattle City (spot)Light: Paul Haase

Get to know Seattle City Light's Paul Haase.

In this week’s Seattle City (spot)Light, we talk with City Light employee Paul Haase.

Paul is a NERC CIP (North American Electrical Reliability/Critical Infrastructure Protection) Compliance Advisor. He works to understand new and changing regulations, inform and educate department members about our regulatory obligations, and monitors to ensure City Light is meeting its NERC CIP requirements.

Prior to joining City Light in 2009, Paul worked in various fields including as a geologist, science writer and as an English teacher in Japan. He earned a bachelor’s degree from California Institute of Technology and a master’s from the University of Washington.

paulhaasespotlightNERC CIP Compliance Advisor Paul Haase

We came out here from Michigan when I was 3. In the 1960s, Seattle was full of free parking and weird stores. It was a little more funky, and for 40 years it sat that way. But it’s been changing over the last decade. It’s not the same Seattle I know and remember. I guess my perspective is a little different, because change is actually in Seattle’s nature. Not so much in my 50 years here, but starting in the 1800s, the city was rapidly growing. So I guess what we’re seeing now is actually consistent with what’s happened in Seattle’s 150-year history. City Light has been part of that because we supply power to the city. I’m proud to work here because we’ve made good choices – either by luck or wisdom. Like, in 1910 going to hydro-power that has supported the growth of the city. We also went to energy conservation, and that has served us well for 50 years.

When I was a kid, probably 12, the Mariners were new and had a ‘Name the Team’ competition. The reason they’ve never done as well as they should is because they’ve never used the name I suggested. My suggestion was the Sluggers, because all Seattle teams have ‘S’ names, and it’s a pretty good baseball name. Mariners just doesn’t fit with Sounders or Seahawks. It should have had an ‘S’ to be alliterative. They would have done better on the field. Or at least they would have a better mascot. Another childhood memory is a paper airplane fundraiser in the King Dome. The Boys and Girls Club would sell paper, and we would stand at the top level and send a paper airplane down to targets on the field. If it went into the bed of a truck, you would win the truck. I bounced one off the cab of a pick-up, so I didn’t win but I got close. But my four younger sisters, who couldn’t make airplanes to save their lives, won 144 Cadbury cream eggs.