The fact that Knowles Dougherty doesn’t own a car and rides his bike almost everywhere didn’t hurt his chances for a recent award.

Thursday, April 06, 2000

The fact that Knowles Dougherty doesn’t own a car and rides his bike almost everywhere didn’t hurt his chances for a recent award.

Larry Dolphin selected Dougherty as the J.C. Hormel Nature Center’s Volunteer of the Year to recognize him for his excellent service as treasurer for the Friends of the Nature Center.

"He’s a real conservationist," Dolphin said. "There aren’t many of us who could give up car ownership if we didn’t have to."

Dougherty figures Dolphin would do the same if he were a better biker and lived closer to work.

"Apparently he’s not a very safe biker," he said with a smile, "he keeps having all these accidents," he said, referring to two fairly major accidents the naturalist has had over the past couple years.

He gets a little more serious when it comes to finances. Dougherty stressed that when he took over as treasurer, it was with the goal that he would be treasurer until he figured out a way to handle the finances well and report them to the board in a comprehensible manner. Making the finances understandable was important, he said, because the board should be able to make educated decisions.

"As a treasurer, he’s really organized things more than ever," Dolphin said. "Not just with the financial reports, but also with the budget. … Years ago, we didn’t really have a budget and sometimes I would have to go back to the Park and Rec Board for more money in the middle of the year. Now we have a pretty good idea of what we need each year and it’s easy to keep track of."

At each meeting, Dougherty presents the board with a line-item report on the two endowment funds and the general fund, a page explaining exactly where all the money is invested and a "bunch of notes" with action suggestions.

"The nice thing about having a well-organized, simple report is that it makes the finances public so the board really does know what’s going on," Dougherty said. "Not all boards do, you know."

His goal of a comprehensible report has been achieved, and with the help of assistant treasurer Lucy Gotz he hopes the report will be easier to do for someone else next year, after Gotz gets it set up on the new computer for the Friends of the Nature Center.

But the Austin native doesn’t limit his contributions to the Nature Center; he takes his ideas with him wherever he goes. The owner of Ideas Inc. isn’t shy about getting involved, at least on an intellectual level. His goal, however, is almost always to empower rather than control others.

To that end, Dougherty can be seen at various city meetings, offering his opinion and sometimes practical, sometimes shocking suggestions.

It was Dougherty after all, who went to the Austin City Council last year to talk about a need for more bike safety awareness and safer routes for the utilitarian – as opposed to purely recreational – biker. As a result, there is now an active bike committee working with council member Mickey Jorgenson and city staff on safety issues and bike routes.

It also was Dougherty who appeared at a council meeting in March with a plan he thought would satisfy the needs of the J.C. Hormel Nature Center, the developers who want to put housing just west of the nature center, the deer that travel between the nature center and Todd Park as well as the city engineering department, which plans to put a bike trail between the two park areas. By all accounts, it’s a pretty good plan.

And, yes, it was Dougherty who appeared at the school district’s public meeting Monday night, to suggest – among other things – that the district consider not teaching math until the sixth grade. With a doctorate in education, he was one of several who wanted to start a charter school in Austin three years ago. The Board of Education said no.

"I don’t need more power," he said. "… I guess I like to see what happens if I spread the power around a little."