Tooloee: engage citizens, earn their respect

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, August 6, 2003

We have two principal institutions on Bainbridge Island, Nezam Tooloee says.

One, the schools, are beloved and respected by their deeply involved constituents.

The other, city government, receives little respect and minimal involvement.

“We don’t have a relationship with local government where we are engaged or inspired, or where government has the confidence and participation of the people,” Tooloee said.

Tooloee is running for the at-large seat on the Bainbridge City Council, in an effort to elevate the perception of local government in the minds of the citizenry.

“We’re all proud of the schools, but there is little connection between the government and our own lives,” Tooloee said.

Tooloee first got involved in city government during the Planning Commission’s debates last fall on shoreline regulations.

“It became apparent to me that something wasn’t right,” he said. “My perception was that those proposals came out of a dynamic in which a relatively small group of activists had disproportionate influence, so that the outcome reflected some of the community’s values but ignored or undermined others.”

Tooloee doesn’t offer any specific policy positions in response, but believes he can institute a more workable process.

“I am not sufficiently arrogant to say my opinion is the right answer,” Tooloee said. “I have to go to school to master a lot of issues, and I won’t really know until I am on the council.”

Tooloee has a four-step plan for “going to school.” First, he wants to gather input from a broad cross-section of the community, an area where he thinks some members of the current council may fall short.

“Ideologues on either end of the spectrum don’t make good legislators, because they come in with a pre-existing agenda and primarily interact with their supporters,” he said.

“You need to really interact with the stakeholders, and be open, flexible, listening and creative. If you don’t do it that way, people will pick up on it.”

Second, Tooloee said the city must engage citizens in the activities of government. To do that, he wants to expand the list of people involved in the work of advisory committees to “a wide range of citizens, not just the vocal activists.”

Third, he wants to find what he calls “win-win” solutions, which he says is the result of involving a broad range of the population early on.

“You hear people say that we shouldn’t re-invent the wheel, but there is a great advantage to letting people invent their own wheel,” he said. “When they participate in defining the problem as well as working on the solution, they have a feeling of ownership.”

Finally, he wants to make his contributions as a volunteer, citizen legislator, not as a professional.

“Legislators in a community like ours don’t need to be professionals, or have dedicated staffs,” he said. “Their job is to give broad policy guidance and leave it to the administration to implement.”

A naturalized citizen born in Iran, Tooloee (pronounced “Two Louie”) came to the United States to attend Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a masters in management science.

“I had intended to go back,” he said, “but Iran had a revolution (towards a theocratic government) while I was away.

“They wouldn’t have wanted me, and I didn’t want them.”

His academic background prepared him for the technological revolution centered in the San Francisco Bay area, so he went to work for a management consulting firm, becoming a partner before age 30.

“I realized that I didn’t want to be doing that at 40,” he said, so he became an entrepreneur, starting a wireless telecommunications company in San Mateo, Calif., then moving to Bellevue to start a similar firm.

“That management and consulting background has taught me how to find solutions rather than stalemates, moratoriums and cynicism,” he said.

He and his wife Berit, a native of Denmark and an oncologist at Virginia Mason in Seattle, moved immediately to Bainbridge Island, which they had discovered a couple of years earlier on a visit to the area with friends.

They have two sons, ages 8 and 5, and have been active with the Bainbridge Island Land Trust, Bloedel Reserve, the Bainbridge Library, Helpline House and Wilkes Elementary School.

They chose the island, he said, for the same reason he believes most others have done – “natural beauty, a unique community and great schools.

“Those are all widely shared values in this community,” he said. “We have a lot we can build on.”