Consummate insider takes turn out front as city manager.

Byline: DIANE DIETZ The Register-Guard

Jim Carlson will step into the limelight at 5:01 tonight when he becomes Eugene's interim city manager, and the public will get its first good look at the insider who has made government wheels turn for three decades.

Carlson has worked behind the scenes, helping mayors, general managers and county commissioners make critical decisions such as where to place fire stations and how to pay for sewers.

He's built a reputation as the consummate, super-competent No. 2 employee, first at the Lane Council of Governments and then as assistant city manager.

But for the next eight months - or so - Carlson arguably will be the most powerful man in Eugene. As city manager, he's captain of a 1,400-person organization with a $300 million budget.

He'll set the agenda for the City Council and the tone for city government services, and he'll participate in decisions that will touch all 141,000 residents.

Carlson, 52, is a different sort than retiring City Manager Jim Johnson, Mayor Jim Torrey noted Wednesday when making the appointment.

It will be interesting to see how his personality mixes with the cocktail of dispositions around the City Council table, Torrey said.

"Every city can say they're unique, but I can assure you that Eugene is a unique place to govern and administer," Torrey said. "Jim Carlson has the technical skills to do the job. We'll see if he has the talent."

Data bank

The mayor was probably understating the case when he complimented Carlson's technical abilities.

In college, Carlson roamed the higher reaches of theoretical mathematics before he settled on statistics as his field of study.

He's been attracted to numbers since the day he encountered multiplication tables in third grade. He's since used them to analyze the physical world and human demographics.

He said he likes math because, "there's usually a right answer. There's logic to it. I like logical, rational thought." He judges things precisely, including himself. Ask how old he is, and he'll tell you he's 52 - born in 1949 - but he has been alive in seven decades. "The '40s and the 2000s, and five in between."

His resume, for another example, says he's "proficient" in the basic use of Microsoft Office, "adequate" in WordPerfect and "capable" of Internet research. His health is excellent, requiring only 1,954 hours of sick leave in 26 years, it says.

The analysis he performed in 25 years at the Lane Council of Governments made him a walking encyclopedia of regional facts. Go ahead, ask him:

How much forestland does Lane County have? "3,000 square miles," he'll say, without hesitation.

What's the ambulance response time to Veneta? "15 minutes."

When was the Ferry Street Bridge built? "The newest one? Or the original one? 1950 and 2000."

"I can't recall a question I've ever asked him when he didn't have a grasp not only of the big picture but also the details," City Councilor Nancy Nathanson said. "And he would always have two or three considerations that I hadn't thought of."

Carlson's already had an enormous - and entirely unheralded - effect on the the region. He used computer modeling techniques, for instance, to determine the best place for Eugene-Springfield residents to bring their trash, so that's why the solid waste transfer station is at Glenwood.

His financial reckoning created the sanitary system user fee, which keeps the regional sewer system on an even keel. Want to see his work? Look at the charges on your EWEB bill.

So, the question becomes: Will Carlson - described by friends in Trekkie terms as downright "Vulcan" - get along with the willful, swerve-happy Eugene City Council?

He thinks so.

"I'm not rigid and I'm not resistant to change," Carlson said with a quick smile. "Randomness has a role in statistics. It's a very important role."

Flying low

Until now, Carlson has managed to escape almost all public attention over 30 years of government work.

He's lived here since the early 1970s, when he was a long-haired, bike-riding graduate student. He went to work as an assistant researcher at the Lane Council of Governments, a regional entity that provides all kinds of analysis to 23 local governments.

As he climbed the ranks, he made dozens of presentations before government bodies, although he avoided being quoted in the newspaper - by design.

The LCOG research arm exists solely on grants and contracts it gets from its government clients. Carlson learned to give center stage to the elected officials who hired him.

"The worst thing that can happen for LCOG is for LCOG to take the glory," he said. "I can feel good about myself without having to take a bow. Most of my satisfactions are internal to me."

In his past two years as assistant city manager, Carlson has been the quiet presence at the edge of the room. His habit is wearing muted olive or navy suits, though he occasionally exhibits a flash of color with a fluorescent Jimmy Buffett parrot tie. (For his big day Wednesday, he chose an elegant green silk tie with a subtle pattern of tiny blue frogs.)

Carlson has silver-gray hair and a mild countenance, and he says people occasionally mistake him - true story - for Tom Brokaw.

The most remarkable things about his appearance are his black-brown eyes. "They're hawk eyes; real focused," said Steve Gordon, a close friend and former co-worker.

Carlson's forte, he'll tell you, is watching, analyzing and formulating strategies. That's why Carlson told Jim Johnson, when Carlson was hired as assistant, that he didn't see himself in the top job.

"My strength is my ability to solve local government problems and my knowledge of inner workings of local government, which is a different role than being the primary spokesperson of Eugene."

Stepping out

But Carlson's initial reticence shouldn't dissuade anybody from imagining him as the top dog, say the people who have known him for decades.

He's a hard worker. Neighbors in his suburban-style Sheldon neighborhood can see it in his lawn. He's got the greenest grass on the block; when he mows, he cuts the grass in precisely angled swaths.

"He's just real conscientious," said next-door neighbor Rod Letcher. "He takes care of the whole thing himself."

Carlson calculated that he worked three or four months more than a regular 40-hour employee last year.

"He'll do something until it's done the right way, no matter what it takes," said Carlson's daughter, Heather, 21.

Two decades ago, when Carlson first became a manager, he knew he wasn't a natural at dealing with employees, Gordon said.

So he became an earnest student of management: "He concentrated on it, he just has an absorbing mind, he worked hard to have people skills," Gordon said.

In recent months, Carlson faced the challenge of performing in public. During live broadcasts of the City Council meetings, he's had to inform and advise the council.

Being on the hot seat isn't easy for him. There's a heaviness and abruptness to his speech, and his wife and daughter - who watch from home - tease him because he never, ever smiles in that context.

One of the City Council's biggest gripes with Jim Johnson was his reluctance to state his opposition to a proposed decision - even when he was asked. Johnson didn't give the council enough "push back," several councilors said.

Carlson will do better, Councilor Gary Pape predicted. "He's pushed back with me on a couple items," Pape said.

"He encouraged me to spend my time on more useful things or more productive things. He was persuasive. He puts some facts out that were convincing."

Councilor Gary Rayor thinks so, too. "He's a really sharp guy. He'll get the hang of it pretty quick."

He's likely to have eight or more months to show his stuff because the City Council appears headed for a national search for a permanent manager, and there's talk of waiting until next January to do the hiring when the newly elected council is seated.

Carlson said he doesn't know yet if he'll apply. "I want to see how I perform and how people perceive my performance," he said.

The other life

While he's quiet and watchful at work, Carlson is a man of passions in his private life.

His chief avocation and major social outlet centers around birds. "I would say that I'm an expert birdwatcher," he said.

He travels the state seven or eight times a year - with wife Judy and several close friends - in search of rare and sometimes colorful plumage, visiting everywhere from Umatilla to Curry County. Over three decades, he's spotted 630 species of birds, including 410 in Oregon.

During a lobbying trip several years ago to Washington, D.C., Carlson, his wife and Gordon took a taxi to the D.C.-Maryland border. Then they walked five or six miles back to Georgetown along a canal pathway - birdwatching all the way.

The trio is headed for Washington again next week for the annual regional government lobbying effort, and they hope to find an afternoon to do something similar.

Does birdwatching mirror life?

"Jim will usually be in the lead," Gordon said. "He walks faster and he likes to be in the front. He's a leader. I yield that to him; he's just great at it."

JIM CARLSON BIOGRAPHY

Born: Dec. 14, 1949, at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Education: Graduated from Sunset High School in Portland in 1967; bachelor's degree in math, Claremont McKenna College, Calif., 1971; master's degree in statistics, University of Oregon, 1973.

Career: Lane Council of Governments, 1973 to 2000, as research assistant, senior research specialist and division manager; then for 14 years as director of local government services. Was contracted out to the city of Eugene for projects from 1978 to 1985.

Pay: $108,000 as assistant city manager, $122,000 as interim city manager.

Family: Married for 31 years to Judy Carlson, a legal assistant at a Eugene law firm. Daughter Heather is a junior studying international relations at Boston University.

Pastimes: Founding member, Oregon Field Ornithologists; among the first in Oregon to see a yellow-throated warbler and a scarlet tanager.

Most recently read: "The Mountains of California" by John Muir and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling.

CAPTION(S):

CHRIS PIETSCH / The Register-Guard Interim City Manager Jim Carlson (center) sits in on a recent Eugene City Council work session.