Shelly Yapp, It's Time To Call It Quits

In a career spanning what seems like some 98 years and five months of making readers' eyes glaze over, I have never called for anybody's resignation.

One is tempted at times.

I have covered politicians who, if not crooked, were working on it; baseball executives who belonged on drunk farms; civic leaders whose egos could dwarf Mount Si; policy makers so dumb they couldn't pass the entrance exam at a middle school.

And over the years I've been astonished by how many people it takes not to do much of anything.

But calling for somebody to resign a job - well, I find that a tad sanctimonious.

Some editorial writers are good at it; authors of letters-to-editors have a remarkable talent for asking officials to disemploy themselves. Back in the days when Nixon was staggering, everybody had a go at it.

But remarkably, I've never been able to call for anybody's resignation.

An exception is at hand.

A very sharp lady named Shelly Yapp, whose title is executive director of the PDA, is our case in point.

The PDA, or Pike Development Authority, runs the Pike Place Market and Yapp runs the PDA. If she answers to anybody it is probably Mayor Norm Rice, who is no doubt too busy being nice to notice what is going on.

I say Yapp is "very sharp" because everybody tells me she is. Ms. Yapp is sharp on money and finance; she is a professional bureaucrat, which is not a pejorative term.

Her credentials were confirmed by the local establishment (or at least that part of it under the wing of former Gov. Mike Lowry) when she was appointed to the University of Washington's Board of Regents. I know business guys who would kill for such prestige.

But Yapp is not the person to run the Pike Place Market. If she is so sharp and intelligent, she ought to know that.

Not long ago Ms. Yapp began threatening Patti Summers at her little jazz emporium at First and Pike.

She demanded that Summers and her husband, Gary Steele, increase their annual gross from about $97,000 a year to $500,000 a year.

Summers can't do that, of course. She couldn't do that if a squadron of Seattle Police began herding people into her club. She can barely pay her rent.

It was a "put up or get out" edict. A case of clubbing somebody over the head with lease clauses. It was bureaucratic bullying.

What is all this stuff we hear about the Market being "the soul of Seattle?"

I have received, in the past few months, at least six "confidential" calls from Market merchants. They speak of "pressure" and the rigidity of Yapp's administration.

The PDA demands greater revenue, better "business practices," and "projections" of future earnings.

I do not say the Market is inhabited exclusively by angels. The place is rife with jealousy, self-interest, bitching, moaning, groaning, rudeness and so forth.

It is a collection of small merchants hustling for a buck. It is not somebody's strip mall filled with national retail chains. If this place is Seattle's "soul," then it needs nurturing and understanding, not bullying.

So all I have said is that Ms. Yapp and her fellow bureaucrats should take their talents elsewhere. Mayor Rice should give this mess his unobstructed concentration.

As for Yapp, she has not been there long enough to rate a gold watch.

But a Mickey Mouse watch would do quite nicely. Then let us hope she consults her little watch, which will confirm that it is time for her to leave.

Emmett Watson's column appears Tuesday in the Local News section of The Times.