City Light Honors Penny-Pinchers

Measured against Seattle City Light's $540 million annual budget, Tom Pallechio's $16,500 savings is no great windfall.

But small savings add up. And Seattle's electric utility annually awards cash incentives to encourage its employees to pinpoint potential savings.

City Light yesterday honored Pallechio, a senior systems analyst, for designing a computer program that allows users to view reports on a PC rather than rely on printed reports.

"That cut down on all the paper we had to handle . . . and also cut down on people having to handle reports," said Pallechio, a five-year veteran of the utility.

City Light management said Pallechio's program resulted in annual savings of $16,500.

In all, three dozen employees were honored yesterday "for outstanding performance, service and monetary savings" totaling nearly $3 million this year.

Recipients shared in cash awards totaling $14,000, City Light spokeswoman Sharon Bennett said.

Among them:

-- Wanda Schulze, senior environmental analyst in the utility's environment and safety division, was cited for her lead in reaching settlements with three unidentified parties connected with a Superfund site in south Kitsap County.

Schulze was project manager for cleanup of the site, where contaminated transformers from City Light and other Northwest electric utilities were recycled until a decade ago. The settlements recovered $2.8 million.

-- Ben Barnes, a power line clearance worker and 13-year City Light employee, was cited for research into state revenue laws that resulted in City Light's saving $91,300 in retail sales tax.

-- Paulette Howell, an administrative specialist at City Light's Skagit project in Skagit County, was cited for implementing a new computer program to better track cost and labor for the wheel replacement overhaul at the Diablo Powerhouse. City Light management said the program resulted in savings of $21,000 annually.

-- Team members John Luhr, Dave Daniel and Marc Sherf from the Boundary Dam Project, north of Spokane, were cited for finding a replacement for failed valves on a turbine, saving $13,000.

Also, 30 employees shared $4,000 in cash awards for exceptional job performance. Their cash awards ranged from $35 to $285.

Bennett said employee committees selected award recipients.