[img]1413|left|Mr. Murley||no_popup[/img]The 60-day physical construction of car lot solar panels at Culver City High School is scheduled to begin in 10 months, and that is the aw-shucks portion of Clyde Murley’s chosen career as an independent energy consultant.
For Mr. Murley, the hard work is finishing up now –
In a soft, non-threatening tone, convincing a mixed audience of skeptics, true believers and wary neighbors that the School District should “prudently” invest scarce millions in this largely untested scheme, then demonstrate that in a few years the District will be rewarded by recouping twice the amount of their investment.
Mr. Murley emphasizes that he is a consultant, not a salesman. “I am not selling anything,” he says. “I am advising. I am trying to steer the School District in a prudent direction.”
Selling or advising, when was the last time the District spent $4 million on a hardly-obligatory project – 2200 solar panels – with an attached pledge of recovering $9 million over a period of years?
Mr. Murley could enter a room, remain for three hours, and depart without notice or lingering after-effects.
This is the profile of an energy expert who blows up the negative historical trappings of portable pitch people, flashy dressing, big-mouthed, intimidating liars.
Dressing for Success
At a glance, Mr. Murley may have just stepped off the rack at a Robert Hall store – decades after Hall went out of business. He dresses properly, probably as he did in 1975, ’85, ’95, ’05 and will in ’15. Style is not crucial, befitting the unobtrusive grandson of a minister from Poughkeepsie.
If your mother met him when she was in a matchmaking mood, she would come home and gush, “I have just met the nicest young man.”
He can trudge through a snowdrift without leaving a footprint.
He is merely kind, compassionate, conservative, gentle, a not-quite middle-aged man, married father of a not-quite teenager, determined, in an authentically agreeable manner, to make the world better.
He reminds you of 1945. Were this the year the war ended, with the radio soap opera Young Widder Brown humming in the background, Mr. Murley would have done the same interview that he did yesterday with the newspaper.
Who is this man, based in Albany, in the Bay Area, who roams the state?
“I am an independent consultant, primarily working on providing just the sort of assistance I am providing to the Culver City Unified School District that is helping them manage a competitive procurement process for a large, commercial-scale solar electric system.”
(To be continued)
