With uncertainty in the air and schools closed for the rest of the academic year, Tacoma nonprofit Graduate Tacoma is making a new resource available to help students and parents access resources to help them during the pandemic.

Graduate Tacoma, in partnership with the Tacoma Urban League, has launched a database that gathers community resources available to students and makes them searchable.

The online directory is an opportunity for Graduate Tacoma to meet an unexpected and unique need in the community, Devin Kelly, director of data for Graduate Tacoma, said. It will also create awareness for resources that have already been in the community prior to the COVID-19 crisis. 

“We think it’s a great opportunity for people to learn about new things,” Kelly said.

Cecelia Garza, director of communications for Graduate Tacoma, said the Tacoma Urban League partnership is crucial to the project. The database is hosted through its website and the nonprofit helps provide funding. The data is managed by Graduate Tacoma.

Users can search by category including meal assistance, energy assistance, and many more.

The resource awareness fits well with what Graduate Tacoma hopes to achieve overall. Garza said the mission of the nonprofit is to help “all Tacoma students to thrive and come to their full potential.”

The COVID-19 database is crucial for now because needs have shifted for students and there is an urgent need to come together and help the community, Garza said. She said it is similar to their summer learning database, but the focus has pivoted due to the pandemic. 

What is Graduate Tacoma? 

Graduate Tacoma brings together community partners to fund projects, manage stakeholders, and create an environment where Tacoma students have the resources they need to succeed.

Initiatives by Graduate Tacoma include access to early learning programs and a government advocacy role.

One positive of Graduate Tacoma’s initiatives is the luxury of not being too in-depth and being able to have influence in programs across the board, said Tafona Ervin, executive director for Graduate Tacoma. It is able to have a role in overseeing situations and finding disconnects between policy, funding, and resources.

The nonprofit works with stakeholders to resolve those disconnects.

“(We connect with) people who have decision making power and also people who are deeply invested in the community,” said Garza.

What is happening now with coronavirus is a fluid situation, said Ervin.

“It feels like every minute of every day changes,” she said. That’s why she emphasizes a rapid response to getting resources to students. She described the new database as a “one stop shop of information.”

Ervin has been with Graduate Tacoma for six years and moved into the executive director role in 2018. Previously, she worked in higher education at the WSU Everett campus. 

Tacoma’s digital divide

Ervin said one important aspect to the database is how parents can find free, reliable internet. She said a goal of Graduate Tacoma is better understanding the digital divide. Not all students have reliable internet access at home. It is one of the topics of policy advocacy for Graduate Tacoma.

Ervin said the coronavirus has brought that digital divide to the forefront as schools closed and classwork moved online. But while the need is highlighted now, it’s always been there.

“We always knew that students needed more technology at home,” Ervin said. 

That’s one reason why the new database has a map sharing locations of free WiFi, but in the long run Ervin and Graduate Tacoma hope that internet access can become a basic need.

The COVID-19 database is updated regularly. It can be found at tacomalearns.org.

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(You can also hear the interview with Ingrid on the We Art Tacoma podcast where she talks about her experience photographing for this series)

Downtown Tacoma

Lincoln District

Sixth Ave & Stadium District

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By Karen Miller

A change is coming to the Tacoma Public Schools calendar next year. 

The district will have a one-hour late start every Wednesday beginning in the 2020-21 school year. The move is a way to create more planning and prep time for teachers and staff districtwide. There will not be extra student instruction during this time. Start times vary by school, and are all one hour later than the normal school bell.

Wednesday was the day chosen after a 2019 survey of families and staff, according to the district’s website.

The move will not apply to SOTA, SAMI, IDEA, Willie Stewart Academy or Remann Hall. Preschool will also not have a late start except Bryant and Geiger where classes follow the regular school schedule.

Sara Ketelsen, a math teacher at Baker Middle School and a member of the union board, said the change will be positive for teachers and administrators. Especially it will be a time to work together in groups to advance student development.

“It allows teachers within the school day to get together and have collaborative time,” she said. 

For first year teachers, it will be especially important, she said. 

Being a first year teacher in a new school can be “isolating,” said Ketelsen, and part of the late start is providing a first year teacher mentoring time with someone who has been at the school and teaching longer.

The change in schedule is part of the most recent collective bargaining agreement between Tacoma Public Schools and Tacoma Education Association. The move is not related to the Tacoma Sleepyhead movement which has been advocating for later start times to improve student health. 

However, Ketelsen thinks the late start will be a positive for older students. Research does point to later start times being beneficial to the sleep hygiene of older students, she said.

Teachers are often pulled in other directions, said Ketelsen, including coaching, parenting, and personal time. This will allow development to be built into the learning day. Currently, that planning time is done outside of work hours and with other factors sometimes is hard to fit in. Especially, she said, that time to collaborate with other staff in the building. It’ll allow teachers to build into their lessons what they discuss with other staff. That hasn’t been available in the past.

“We [teachers] are consistently building the plane while flying it,” she said.

Ketelsen has worked in Tacoma Public Schools for 13 years, including time at both Lincoln High School and Baker.

Other districts around the Puget Sound region have also switched to weekly late start, one of which is Fife where Tacoma parent Diana Busch is now a licensed practical nurse. She previously worked as a nurse for the Tacoma School District and her two children attend Tacoma Schools.

Busch said the late starts will give teachers crucial planning time, something she’s noticed in her new district.

“I anticipate this being positive for (Tacoma) staff,” she said.

It allows time for things like paperwork and consulting with other teachers. That was the biggest difference Busch saw when moving to Fife. In Tacoma it was sometimes hard to fit in administrative tasks during the day. 

“There was… minimal time when I was at work without students,” Busch said. “It’s incredible how much easier (late start) felt.”

While this is a positive for teachers, Busch said it could put a strain on families, especially those who commute. The district will not provide childcare for the late start days. 

The district said on its website that it has communicated with daycares and community partners about the late start, but it is up to those groups to decide what services will be provided.

The school year begins September 9, a Wednesday, but will not include a late start. The first late start will be September 16. 

As of now, schools are not in session until at least April 24 due to coronavirus concerns. It is not yet known how this might affect the coming school year.

The school district was unable to comment on the start time change due to the coronavirus outbreak and forced closure of schools. The district did refer to an FAQ available on its website for more information.

It’s official: Pierce County Councilman Doug Richardson is running for sheriff.

Richardson, 65, said he intended to formally announce his candidacy on social media this week, following through on a plan he’s been considering for months.

“I really believe that I can provide leadership in the department in these challenging times,” he said.

He knows his candidacy is unorthodox; he has no law enforcement experience. He’s a retired Army Reserve Brigadier General, a former mayor of Lakewood and he’s spent the past eight years on the county council, but he’s never been a cop. Typically, county sheriffs are commissioned officers.

State law includes provisions for civilian sheriffs. They must undergo at least 80 hours of law enforcement training approved by the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission.

Richardson said he’s taken a close look at those requirements.

“There is a path toward running for sheriff and being certified,” he said. “There is a clear path to that.”

He added that he’s spoken with local and regional law enforcement leaders in and out of the county about his plans, and received encouragement, though he declined to name names before his formal announcement.

“I’m kind of humbled by the reaction of their significant support for me doing it,” he said.

Richardson’s county council stint, including the last few years as chairman, has given him a fine-grained look at the agency’s budget, largest of any county department. The 800-member sheriff’s department handles law enforcement and operates the county jail.

If elected, Richardson said he would focus on three areas: Deputy safety, incident response times, and recruiting in “this difficult climate.” He noted the department currently has 24 vacancies, and pending retirements will increase that number.

“We need very aggressive recruiting, and we also need to see whether or not we’re injuring ourselves on who can be recruited,” he said. “I am very committed also to improving training and doing everything we can to improve safety for our deputies, and really making sure residents are getting the kind of response they want to see out of the department.”

Technically, sheriff is a nonpartisan position, but partisan alliances could play a role in the campaign. Richardson, a Republican, would potentially draw support from Pierce County Republican leaders and organizations.

Richardson’s likeliest opponent, Detective Ed Troyer, hasn’t made the decision to run yet. Asked this week about his plans, Troyer said he is still gathering information and consulting with a group of “kitchen table” advisors.

Troyer, longtime spokesman for Sheriff Paul Pastor, has spent 35 years in the sheriff’s office, 10 as a patrol deputy. He said he hopes to build on the foundation created by Pastor, and continue to develop future leaders within the department.

“I have nothing bad to say about Doug Richardson,” Troyer said. “I hear he was a great mayor and a great councilman. I just don’t understand why he thinks with no law enforcement experience, that he can lead an agency of 800 people.”

The jockeying for Pastor’s position began last year, when he announced he did not intend to seek re-election, and would retire this spring, after 19 years on the job.

That moment is approaching swiftly; last week, county council members formed an ad-hoc committee to review applications for Pastor’s soon-to-be-vacant position. Committee members will weigh the merits of each candidate in closed executive sessions. The successful applicant will serve as interim sheriff until a new sheriff is elected.

Applicants include members of Pastor’s current command staff, but not Troyer. Richardson didn’t apply either, and he’s recused himself from the committee’s deliberations.

By Sean Robinson

One year from now, Pierce County voters will elect a new sheriff. For the first time in 20 years, it won’t be Paul Pastor, who recently announced he will step down in early 2020.

County council members will appoint an interim sheriff to fill the position before next November’s election when Pastor officially departs, but that will provide a prologue to the main event: a race to decide who will lead a law enforcement agency covering a vast territory ranging from the slopes of Mount Rainier to the waters of the Tacoma Narrows and the Key Peninsula. The sheriff oversees 329 commissioned officers, 305 corrections officers and 145 civilian employers. The job pays about $155,000 annually.

Candidates can’t file formally until May of next year. State campaign finance records show no one is raising money yet, but two likely contenders are emerging: Pierce County Councilman Doug Richardson and Det. Ed Troyer, longtime spokesman for the sheriff’s office.

When reached, both men said they hadn’t made formal decisions yet.

“I’m considering it,” Richardson said in a recent interview. “I’m just going through all of the fact finding. You just want to make sure that if you’re gonna do it, you’re gonna do it right.”

Troyer said he is also exploring the possibility of running, but hasn’t decided for certain.

“I’m exploring it — no more, no less,” he said. “Sheriff Pastor has done some great things, and built programs that need to continue.”

Richardson recently spoke to leaders of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Guild, the union representing sheriff’s deputies, and said he was considering a possible run. His candidacy would be unorthodox in one sense: the two-term councilman and former Lakewood mayor has no law enforcement experience, though he is a retired Army Reserve brigadier general, and has spent 30 years managing a private defense contractor.

Typically, county sheriffs are commissioned officers. Richardson isn’t. In theory, he would have to undergo law enforcement training as mandated by state law, and administered by the state’s Criminal Justice Training Commission.

“The plain language says a basic training program,” said Marisa O’Neill, the commission’s policy and accreditation manager. O’Neill said the commission relies on legal advice from the state Attorney General’s Office when determining the necessary protocols for newly elected sheriffs who haven’t completed law enforcement training in the past. Typically, executive-level positions such as sheriff require at least 80 hours of commission-approved training.

Richardson said he has been researching those qualification requirements as he considers a run.

“That’s one of the principal things in my fact finding that I’m doing,” he said. “I think there are some strengths that I have. I spent 32 years in the service, in very large-unit organizations with chains of command, all those things you’d expect to find in the sheriff’s department as well. “Running a large organization is a significant strength, and then you throw in the civilian aspects of it with budgets and how to pull those together. But I don’t have a law enforcement background, so what are the requirements in order to fill that position and what must you do?”

Troyer would face a different set of challenges. Though he is a commissioned officer and part of Pastor’s inner circle, he has not been a commander in the sheriff’s department. His name and face are widely known due to his long service as a spokesman, and he serves as executive director of the nonprofit Crime Stoppers of Tacoma/Pierce County.

“I bring a different type of leadership than just going up through the ranks,” he said. “I have 33 years of institutional knowledge for how our department works. We’ve developed excellent leaders over the years. We roll up our sleeves and get stuff done. There’s still some things to do to continue the good work that Sheriff Pastor has done.”

Troyer and Richardson both said they have spoken to Pastor about their potential pursuit of the office. Both said they received positive reactions, but they added that Pastor prefers to remain neutral rather than anointing or endorsing a successor.

Pastor, 70, is the longest-serving sheriff in county history. He took office in 2000, when the office was still appointment based. County voters altered that dynamic in 2006, voting to amend the county charter to elect the sheriff. Pastor first ran in 2008, and again in 2012 and 2016, without opposition. Term limits prevent him from running again.

Technically the sheriff’s office is a nonpartisan position, but a race between Richardson and Troyer would likely fall along quiet party lines. Richardson ran as a Republican in his county council races. Troyer, who hasn’t sought elected office before, said he would probably run without a party label.

Richardson noted that he expects to make a formal decision before Pastor’s interim replacement is appointed. He would recuse himself from that process if he decides to run, he said, and will not seek the appointment.

“This is really a family decision, because this is a significant decision,” he said. “You don’t just light-heartedly become the sheriff of Pierce County, with that kind of 24/7 responsibility. Our family’s not ready to make a decision yet.”

As for Troyer, he said his decision will rest in part on his continuing interest in public service.

“I want to start and end my career with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department,” he said. “I want to build leadership from within for the future. It would be devastating if that didn’t happen.”

It’s easy to reduce political races to simplistic frames, but sometimes they still fit. 

Consider this year’s general election contest for Position 1 on the Tacoma School Board. While issues such as school funding and lingering angst from last year’s teacher strike loom large, it’s hard to look at incumbent Debbie Winskill and challenger Lisa Keating without seeing a generational dynamic: old Tacoma versus new Tacoma.

Winskill, 71, ranks as the city’s longest-serving elected official, and among the longest-serving in the state. She was first elected in 1989, when George H.W. Bush was president. She’s been in office longer than U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, elected in 1992.

She’s worked with seven school superintendents, starting with Lillian Barna. She watched and worked with Barna’s successors, serving during the brief and turbulent two-year tenure of Rudy Crew in the early 1990s, and the even briefer and more turbulent tenure of Charlie Milligan in the mid-2000s. Her children attended Tacoma schools, and now so do her grandchildren.

In short, Winskill has institutional memory to burn, and deep knowledge of the levers that move district policy. She thinks that counts for something.

“I think it’s really important,” she said. “People are always asking about the background of why we do things and what came before. I think it’s important for the district to have that institutional knowledge. There’s very few people who do. I’m still very interested in the job. I’m out and about in all the schools, doing as much as I can to know what’s happening. I think I make good decisions. I have a lot of knowledge about the operations of the school district.”

Keating, 48, comes from another time. She’s also the parent of a Tacoma student, and she sees recent changes in attitude and culture that reflect evolving views in education as well as society.

“I was in high school when (Winskill) was first elected,” she said. “I’ve been a community partner with the district and within the district for about 10 years. I’ve really spent a significant amount of effort in helping with the implementation of policy and school climate.

“In 2012, nobody was talking about gender identity,” Keating added. “Marriage equality hadn’t even passed. We’ve moved the bar in terms of protections and safety and civil rights protections. That tipping point has happened, then you get people like me who have been a part of the groundwork. I felt like I had to run at this point.”

Measured by fund-raising and endorsements, Keating is way ahead. State campaign-finance records show she’s raised more than $28,000 and spent $18,000 — big numbers for a school board race. Her campaign hosts an active Facebook page with regular updates. She’s backed and endorsed by heavy political hitters, including Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards, state Rep. and incoming Speaker of the House Laurie Jinkins, (D-Tacoma) and Democratic organizations from the area’s three legislative districts. The Washington Education Association supports Keating, as does the organization’s local arm in Tacoma.

And Winskill? Her campaign finance records are a blank slate. She’s chosen the mini-reporting option, an approach that signals her intent to raise and spend less than $5,000. She doesn’t appear to have a campaign website, or a campaign Facebook page.

In the digital age, is it possible to win a race without such trappings, money and backing? Winskill can say yes. Her previous race in 2013 followed a similar pattern. Challenger Dexter Gordon raised $43,000 that year, more than Keating’s 2019 tally. He racked up local endorsements from prominent figures and organizations, much like Keating — and lost. Winskill, running the same low-budget campaign she’s mounted in 2019, spent less than $5,000, and won re-election decisively with 55 percent of the vote. 

“I’ve never gotten the TEA endorsement in all the times that I’ve run,” she said. “Never. Who knows why they didn’t endorse me. I try to do the right thing for everybody involved, but I am not a representative of the union. I represent the taxpayers of Tacoma.”

Keating cites her decade of activism and grassroots involvement with Tacoma schools as a solid launch pad to service on the board. She leads My Purple Umbrella, an organization that supports LGBTQ students and families.

While she has focused on issues such as anti-bullying initiatives and school safety, she said she intends to dig into district finances and costs.

“I would want the community to know that I would take this role very seriously and I take the responsibility of being fiscally responsible and accountable very seriously,” she said. “I’ve been a small business owner and I’m married to a small business owner, so we understand fiscal responsibility. I would bring that knowledge and that lens to the school board.”

The 2018 strike and the resulting community fallout drove Keating’s decision to run, she said. The district’s communications strategy, marked by generic messages from administration and limited public comment from school board members, left a bitter taste.

 “I was really disheartened by the messaging that was coming out of the district about our teachers, and also how our board was inaccessible to the public,” she said. “We never got to hold them accountable and have a dialogue about how we got here. I understand that it’s partly the McCleary fix, the levy fix, but in terms of how the teachers were talked about, it really felt like they were being demonized. Had the board been more accessible to the public, maybe a lot of this distrust and assumptions over budget decisions would have been negated.”

Winskill, who watched the strike play out in the media (a spectacle she’d seen before), did not defend the district’s communication strategy, but she cited her personal interactions with members of the public, as well as her low-tech approach. Her personal phone number still appears on the district’s website, as it has for years.

“I responded to everybody who called me, and I called back almost every person that called me,” she said. “I fielded many, many calls over that time period. I’m not much of an emailer. It’s not personal.”

She added that the state’s legislative fix left Tacoma in a fiscal pit with little warning, and the resulting strike caught members off guard.

“The district’s working really hard to get past the strike, meeting more regularly with the union,” she added. “I think even though the union didn’t endorse me, I have a very good relationship with people in the union.”

Winskill noted that her store of knowledge sometimes translates to resisting or voting against decisions by administrators. When the district fired longtime employee Ken Wilson in 2016 in the midst of a water-testing controversy, Winskill cast the lone no-vote, believing the decision was punitive. Wilson subsequently sued the district for wrongful termination and won a $250,000 settlement.

“There are people who think that the administration is always going to tell them the right answer,” Winskill said. “I just think sometimes they need to be questioned.”

Keating, while acknowledging that she will face a learning curve if elected, said she won’t be a rubber stamp for district administration, a concern she’s heard on the campaign trail about the current board.

“I’ve talked to educators and people in the district who feel that way,” she said. “I will never assume that the superintendent knows all and sees all or that the school board knows all and sees all. What I will say is that I have a record as a community leader. I ask a lot of questions, and the reason I ask these questions is so I can get a full spectrum of understanding of whatever the issue is, so that I can form my opinion. I don’t have an agenda going in other than increasing the transparency and communication of the board. I want to see the board make equitable funding and budget decisions so that there’s the least impact on our students while at the same time valuing the educational professionals who work for Tacoma Schools.”

By Sean Robinson

For years, Port of Tacoma candidate Deanna Keller’s plastics fabrication business has counted law enforcement agencies among its clients.

The list includes the Tacoma Police Department, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and notably, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

It’s no secret; records of the latter business relationship appear in a public database maintained by the federal General Services Administration. 

“Yes, it’s true,” Keller said in a recent interview. “It’s a very small portion of our business, and we’re a very small business.”

The records show 43 transactions since 2009 between ICE and Kel-Tech Plastics Inc., the business Keller leads as president and CEO. The transactions total about $300,000 over the past decade. Most reflect agency purchases of video recording equipment and plastic camera housings for covert surveillance.

Kel-Tech’s primary business involves creating plastic visual displays for retailers such as Nordstrom. Law enforcement clients make up a smaller share of her client base. In a 2014 interview with the City of Tacoma’s “Business Matters” broadcast, Keller explained in general terms the products her company provides to law enforcement. They include plastic liners for cargo vans transporting arrestees and detainees.

The company also builds camera housings for surveillance activity. Keller described them during the broadcast.

“Covert surveillance equipment, where we’ll build the housings,” she said. “We put in the electronics, we program that. …Police or any local or federal law enforcement can take that camera and go from case to case or house to house.”  

Before 2016, and before Keller’s run for Position 3 on the Port Commission, doing business with ICE might not have raised an eyebrow. But the election of Donald Trump as president and the resulting immigration crackdown have cast the agency in a different light. The presence of the privately operated Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma’s Tideflats, the heart of the port of Tacoma, adds another layer of complexity.

The NWDC has become a magnet for protest. Activists who decry the Trump administration’s enforcement tactics demonstrate regularly in front of the site. Tacoma city leaders have explored ways to prevent the detention center from expanding. 

Aggressive tactics by ICE have also come under scrutiny. In 2017, Gov. Jay Inslee signed an executive order barring state agencies from routinely checking a person’s residency status to search for possible immigration violations. At the time, Inslee said he didn’t want state officers to become “mini-ICE agents.”

Keller’s business relationship with ICE didn’t come up before the Aug. 6 primary election, which saw her finish first with 48 percent of the vote, ahead of opponents Frank Boykin (28 percent) and Justin Camarata (21 percent). She didn’t mention it on her campaign website, nor did the subject surface in candidate forums.

“It’s a complex issue,” Keller said. “We also sold to ICE long before Trump demonized ICE. It has more to do with Donald Trump than it has to do with me or anybody else. I do not subscribe to and don’t believe that what he’s doing is right at all. There’s nothing wrong that we’re doing and I know that and I’m not afraid to say that. Selling to ICE is very, very small, and it has been very sporadic. We’re not a consistent vendor. Our biggest customer is actually Nordstrom.”

Boykin, who finished second in the primary and will face Keller in the Nov. 5 general election, said he didn’t know his opponent’s business included transactions with ICE.

“I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “I do know that a candidate’s experience, values and track record are a reason why people vote for them. I believe I have the most experience. I know and understand the values of Pierce County. I trust that those things, coupled with my vision for the Port, will make me the hands-down choice.”

Camarata, who finished third in the primary, said he was aware that ICE has purchased products from Keller’s company, but he chose not to raise it during the campaign.

“We knew about it,” he said. “We basically were just gonna see what the results were. My desire had been to remain positive and above board, and not run an attack-style campaign.”

Kel-Tech’s transactions with ICE and other law enforcement agencies are legal. They’re also small in comparison with local corporate giants such as Amazon and Microsoft. Both do business with ICE that runs into the tens of millions (and both have faced internal and external criticism for it.)

Does it matter if Keller’s company does the same thing on a smaller scale? She said her company has no current contracts with ICE, and she added that she doesn’t support the location of the detention center in the Tideflats.

“We haven’t done anything agreeing with detaining people in the Tideflats at all,” she said. “In fact, six candidates at the candidate’s forum for Citizens for a Healthy Bay all said they didn’t agree with that.”

Camarata, who served briefly on the Tacoma City Council on an interim basis, thinks the information is relevant to voters, particularly those in the progressive-minded areas of Tacoma, where anti-ICE sentiment runs hotter.

“I think in Tacoma it probably is not gonna help,” he said. “It’s certainly relevant, given all the things going around the Northwest Detention Center. It certainly would impact my vote, but I’m not sure I represent the typical Pierce County voter.”

Asked whether she would recuse herself from Port votes that would involve ICE activity, Keller said she would decide such questions case by case, and added she would have no problem doing so. 

“I don’t have any contracts underway,” she said. “I’m not selling to them right now. I basically decided to run for office because of the 2016 election. I hope that people will use common sense.” 

Previously undisclosed records show that Tacoma schools leaders admit a hasty and incomplete investigation led to Ken Wilson’s termination

by Sean Robinson

Three years ago, in the midst of a public outcry over lead-tainted water, Tacoma Schools leaders fired Ken Wilson in public.

The district’s longtime safety and environmental health manager was blamed for overlooking reports of unsafe lead levels in drinking water at a pair of elementary schools.

A year later, school administrators reinstated Wilson in private and paid him $250,000 to settle a wrongful termination lawsuit. The agreement included a letter admitting that the process leading to Wilson’s firing was flawed, and that he was given no opportunity to defend himself. Court records show the case ended in March 2018 with an order of dismissal. (Read the PDF of the settlement agreement and the letter.)

The public never knew. School leaders didn’t announce Wilson’s reinstatement, or the payout he received. They did not disclose or publish the letter clearing his name.

“The District acknowledges that Mr. Wilson did not get an opportunity to participate in the investigation surrounding water quality, and that Mr. Wilson may have been able to provide mitigating information if he had been allowed to participate,” states the letter signed by Lisa Nolan, Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources, obtained via public disclosure.

School board members took no public vote to approve the agreement with Wilson because the amount fell below $300,000: the threshold set by district rules that would have required public approval.

Wilson, now working for a private environmental company, declined to comment for this story. His attorney, Mary Ruth Mann, spoke on his behalf.

“It was really a bad firing,” she said in a recent interview. “The injustice was obvious once the right people looked at it.”

Records obtained from the school district and Pierce County Superior Court show that Wilson sought a hearing before his termination and requested time to explain himself. He received medical treatment for stress-related issues following adverse publicity. The same records show that his requests for additional time were denied, and that he was fired without a full investigation, before receiving the records he sought.

On May 12, 2016, the day of Wilson’s firing, school board members had plenty of information to go on. News of unsafe lead levels at Mann and Reed elementary schools had emerged in late April. One sample from Reed revealed lead levels of 2,330 parts per billion (ppb), exponentially higher than the recommended federal standard of 20 ppb for school drinking water.

The reports also revealed that the associated test results were 11 months old. The district had taken no action to correct the problem.

The resulting pressure and scrutiny fell on Wilson, who had worked for the district since 2002. He had a child attending Tacoma schools when the news broke.

Public records indicate that he discovered the test results on April 22, 2016. Compiling data in response to a public records request, Wilson realized that the information appeared in a set of paper reports he had overlooked.

The reaction from school leaders was swift and severe. Wilson was placed on administrative leave April 25, three days after he spotted the “outlier” test results. On May 10, Superintendent Carla Santorno sent a letter to Wilson, saying he did not take any steps to address the problem.

At the time, Mann told a Tacoma News Tribune reporter that Wilson didn’t see the test results because they weren’t delivered in the standard email reports he was accustomed to receiving from an outside lab that conducted water testing for the district.

Instead, Mann said in 2016, the reports were buried in hundreds of pages of printed spreadsheets that came with the lab’s invoice for payment. Wilson spotted the paper records, delivered them to his supervisors immediately, and conducted personal water tests at Mann and Reed.

It didn’t matter; Wilson was fired on May 12, 2016, at a tense school board meeting, three weeks after the test results were uncovered.

The action appeared in a set of personnel recommendations from Santorno, listed on the board’s consent agenda for that day.

During public comment before the board vote, Wilson’s wife, Lorraine, tried to speak against the firing. Board president Karen Vialle told her she wasn’t allowed to speak. The moment is preserved in the video of the meeting, still publicly accessible (the relevant portion begins at minute 16:08).

“I am speaking against the board approving the board’s recommendations,” Lorraine Wilson said. “My husband is ill and under a doctor’s care.”

Vialle stopped her, indicating that the comments were out of order.

“My husband is searching for due process,” Lorraine Wilson continued.

Vialle stopped her again.

“Mrs. Wilson, I’m sorry, you’re out of order,” she said. “Thank you.”

Another commenter, unidentified, also suggested that board members should seek all information before voting to terminate Wilson. Before she could continue, she was told the comments were inappropriate.

The final vote was 3-1. Board member Debbie Winskill cast the sole no-vote. She explained her reasons in a recent interview.

“It was punitive,” she said. “I asked for the report. It was 700 pages of numbers. It’s like, how do you discern? There was nothing highlighted, there was nothing showing the lead was high. It all had come on so quickly. How do we expect him to know this? And he had another job. I mean, there’s questions to be asked before you jump to a conclusion.”

Winskill said she was vaguely aware of the subsequent settlement with Wilson and his reinstatement, but did not know the amount of the payout, which was never shown to the board.

Her mention of “another job” referred to an argument Wilson made in his lawsuit; he contended district leaders had saddled him with various duties unrelated to environmental safety. Coordinating active shooter drills was one example, according to court records, which also accused district leaders of rushing to judgment.

“It appears that the district wants to prevent (Wilson) from having a fair hearing and to get political advantage by unfairly making him a scapegoat in the media while forbidding him time or resources to defend himself,” Mann wrote in court filings.

Asked recently about the settlement and the agreement with Wilson, district spokesman Dan Voelpel said, “the district made a business decision to resolve the case based on the likely costs involved and because Mr. Wilson did not get to fully tell his side of the story before he was terminated. Since this incident, the district has changed the process for termination of administrative employees.”

How has the process changed? Voelpel said that the district has since added a review step for administrative terminations, involving consultation with the legal division and the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources.

Mann, Wilson’s attorney, declined to comment on the actions of specific district leaders. She added that Wilson isn’t interested in revisiting the issue.

“It’s a long way in the past now to cast blame,” she said. “People were legitimately concerned and were not properly educated at that time. It was resolved and he’s moved on.”

Thank you to the members of Channel 253, whose support allowed us to expand into reporting such as this story.

Our recycling is so highly-contaminated that the city of Tacoma is currently weighing options for what to do with it, and might take away our curbside recycling unless we agree to pay a little more each month. The problem: Bad recycling is more expensive for the city to process. (To be clear, we have always been bad at recycling, but now that China has deemed our recycling too contaminated to purchase, the city has decided they need to address it at the root—which means us.)

Did you know we used to make a little money off our recycling, which helped offset the cost of the curbside recycling service? Yeah, that’s over.

To be fair to you, Average Citizen Currently Standing With A Plastic Aquafina Bottle With A Shrink-wrapped Label And Trying To Decide What To Do With It, recycling rules can change from city to city. Sometimes you’re just not sure, so you wish-cycle it! Not sure if that peanut butter jar with some peanut butter still stuck inside is recyclable? Wish-cycle it! What’s the harm, right?

(“Wish-cycling” is the process by which you throw something in the recycling bin wholly unsure of whether it’s actually recyclable. Sometimes, people wish-cycle entire greasy pizza boxes with crust inside. I’ve seen it.)

Wish-cycling IS harmful, though, because of the following:

• those materials that aren’t recyclable DON’T end up getting recycled!
• they’re costing us money
• we’re not actually doing anything positive for the environment
• sometimes, we’re putting our friends who work in those recycling and sorting facilities at risk.

So when in doubt, throw it out. Or think of it this way: Every time you wish-cycle something you’re not 100 percent sure about, someone screams at an innocent puppy.

Below are some guidelines of what is and isn’t recyclable, thanks to the city of Tacoma’s website. This is by no means an exhaustive list—no single massive list from the City of Tacoma exists as far as we know, but we have high hopes that Councilman Ryan Mello is developing an app for that (that’s a teaser to get you to listen to Citizen Tacoma Episode 45, where we go all-in on recycling).

According to the city:  Recycled materials should be CLEAN, EMPTY, and DRY. This means no peanut butter residue in the peanut butter jar, and no greasy food residue on pizza boxes. Throw your greasy pizza boxes out, people!

PAPER

Whatever you do, please keep it dry.

Recycle:

• Newspapers, magazines, catalogs, phone books
• Clean paper bags (handles are OK; remove receipts)
• White and colored paper (lined, copier, computer; staples are ok)
• Mail and envelopes (any color; window envelopes are ok)

Do not recycle:

• Paper towels, napkins, coffee cups, paper plates, wet or soiled paper, or paper with wax or plastic coating.

CARDBOARD

Again, from the city of Tacoma: Cardboard should be FLATTENED and you should remove all packing materials and liners before recycling.

Recycle:

• Corrugated cardboard boxes
• Paperboard boxes (cereal boxes, cracker boxes, shoe boxes, etc.)

PLASTIC

The city says we need to empty and rinse all plastic recyclables, but the screw-on lids can stay on when you recycle plastic.

Recycle:

• Plastic bottles (plastic soda and water bottles; shampoo bottles, etc.)
• Plastic jugs (milk, juice, detergent, etc.)
• Plastic jars (peanut butter, sauce, mayonnaise; etc.)
• Plastic tubs (yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, etc.; remove flat snap-on lids)

Do not recycle:

• Take-out containers, “clamshell” containers that often hold berries or a nice slice of cheesecake from Met Mart, food wrap, straws, or drink cups and lids
• SURPRISING NO-NO: You know that flat plastic lid on your sour cream container? Not recyclable. According to the city, these cause problems during the sorting process and tend to jam the machinery.
• SORT OF OBVIOUS NO-NO: DO NOT RECYCLE any bottle that has had medication in it (even an Aspirin bottle) because the residue from the medication can become a hazard for the people working in the material recovery facility.
• NEW NO-NO: According to Solid Waste Management Division Manager Lewis Griffith, plastic bags are a hazard to machinery and to the human beings who work in the material recovery facility (they have to dig them out of said machinery) and should NOT be recycled — even though the city’s website currently says they can be (um, confusing).

METAL

Again, empty and rinse all materials.

Recycle:

• Aluminum beverage cans
• Metal cans (soup, vegetables, pet food; ok to leave lid attached)
• Empty aerosol cans (hairspray, cleaners, spray paint; must be completely empty)

Do not recycle:

• Metal bottle caps and lids, unattached metal can lids, wire coat hangers
• BRING TO THE RECYCLE CENTER: Scrap metals (large and small metal items, including metal lids) are accepted at the Recycle Center at 3510 S. Mullen St.

GLASS

Say it with me now: Empty and rinse! And please only put them in the glass recycling container.

Recycle:

• Glass bottles (soda, juice, milk, beer, wine bottles)
• Glass jars (soup, sauces, jams, etc.)

Do not recycle:

• Broken glass, windows, light bulbs, bakeware, glass dishes, mirrors, ceramics, vases, drinking glasses, eyeglasses

BATTERIES

This is straight from the city’s website:

• Seal household (alkaline) batteries inside a clear plastic bag and place in curbside glass recycling bin, or drop off at the Recycle Center.

• Drop off other types of batteries, including vehicle, button, lithium, and nickel-cadmium at the Household Hazardous Waste Facility, 3510 S. Mullen St.

This article was originally published for members-only before being made available to the public. If you want to see articles when they’re published, please join Channel 253 as a member and help us sustain and grow our podcasts, events, and now written reporting!

What is Click?

Click Network – formally known as Click! Cable TV – is the city of Tacoma’s municipally-owned cable and broadband internet network. It began in the ‘90s and grew out of a fiber optic network built by Tacoma Power to improve maintenance and efficiency of the power grid. With excess capacity built in, Tacoma Public Utilities also saw an opportunity to give Tacoma-area cable customers an alternative to TCI, which had a monopoly in the area and was known for spotty service.

What does Click look like now?

Click’s cable service is sold directly to customers under the brand name and competes with Comcast in the Tacoma area. But Click internet is sold indirectly to customers through two internet service providers – Advanced Stream and Rainier Connect – who lease space on the Click network. Right now, their future and the future of Click is uncertain.

Advanced Stream and Rainier Connect are local businesses, something that a lot of internet customers appreciate. And Click’s cable operation is particularly known for fast, responsive customer service – words rarely used to describe its competitor, Comcast.

Click’s lower-than-average rates also benefit Comcast customers in the Tacoma area – Comcast’s rates have tended to be lower here than in other cities.

Those low rates – two years ago, Click management estimated they were 15 to 30 percent lower than what Comcast charges – have also hurt Click’s bottom line. That year, Click management asked the TPU board and City Council for a 13 percent rate hike for Click cable to bring it closer to what Comcast is charging for the service. It was the first rate hike since 2014, and it was approved. Another rate hike was sought and approved last fall.

So why all the controversy?

Former TPU leadership – namely, former director Bill Gaines – saw Click as a financial burden. TPU management today maintains that Click loses millions of dollars every biennium. In 2015, Wave Broadband of Kirkland made a sole-source bid to the city to lease Click for 40 years and run it as a private cable and internet company, essentially taking control away from the City and opening up the possibility that the system could be sold. If you lived here then, you may recall that Click fans lost their shit.

In the midst of that, TPU board members and the City Council hatched a plan to transform Click into a municipally owned – AND operated – cable, internet, and voice-over-internet company. This was called the “all-in” plan. The local ISPs (Rainier Connect and Advance Stream) would be cut out of the equation in this plan, and the city would get into the business of competing for internet customers with CenturyLink and Comcast directly. It was expected that at least for the first several years, this new business model wouldn’t make enough money to sustain itself, so the board – at the urging of several council members – voted to allow it to use between $6 and $10 million of Tacoma Power revenues every year until the new business could operate in the black. As a sub-fund of Tacoma Power, relying on electric ratepayer revenues wasn’t new for Click – any time it brings in less than it costs to run the system, Tacoma Power revenues make up the difference.

Is TPU management right? Is Click losing money?

This is the million dollar question, and the answer could solve a lot of issues and legal problems for Click – unfortunately, it’s hard to say, because of the way costs are shared between Click and Tacoma Power.

Click’s losses have been estimated at $6.5 million for the 2017-18 biennium and $9.9 million in the 2019-20 biennium, according to a report in The News Tribune.

But some dispute those numbers because they feel the way costs are shared between Click and Power is unfair to Click, and doesn’t give Click enough credit for the value it provides to Tacoma Power.

Right now, Click is responsible for 94 percent of its costs and Tacoma Power only shoulders 6 percent. Management has argued that Click’s network doesn’t play enough of a role in providing electricity to Tacoma Power’s 170,000 residential, industrial and commercial customers, making it improper for electric rates to fill in when Click’s revenues fall short.

In the past, that cost allocation has been closer to 75 percent for Click and 25 percent for Tacoma Power. Some people think that was a fairer cost sharing method – Tacoma Power uses the Click network to communicate between substations and to power its smart meters, of which about 14,000 are still operational. The allocation method is a management decision, not a technical decision.

To solve once and for all the question of how Click’s costs should be split, the Tacoma City Council in late 2016 ordered an independent audit of Click’s finances. It also ordered another independent audit to study whether or not Click, as a city-owned and operated internet, phone and cable business, would be able to gain enough market share in the existing environment to be profitable or financially solvent.

Bids were submitted and consultants were chosen, but according to the city and TPU, those audits were never performed, because Click got sued and the funding method for the all-in plan – that $6 to $10 million a year from Tacoma Power – now face a legal challenge.

Why did Click get sued?

Under the 94-6 cost allocation method, Click looks like it’s losing a lot of money, and Tacoma Power revenues are having to make up the losses. But a 2015 memo from then-City Attorney (now City Manager) Elizabeth Pauli makes it clear that electric rate revenues can only be used on services that are directly related to providing electricity to customers – they can’t be used to pay for the expenses of a commercial telecommunications system. And according to the city charter, all TPU revenue can only be used for the necessary operating expenses of the utilities. “Utility revenue shall never be used to make loans to any other utility, department or agency of the city,” the memo says.

The lawsuit, filed in 2017, asks the court to clarify whether it’s legal for Click to be funded the way it has, with millions of dollars of Tacoma Power revenues making up its shortfalls. It also uses Pauli’s memo as the basis of many of its legal arguments. Filed on behalf of former Tacoma mayor Mike Crowley, former TPU attorney Mark Bubenik, and former TPU director Ted Coates, it also asks that ratepayers be reimbursed $21 million for any past funding Click may have wrongfully gotten from Power.

Notably, last March, a judge ruled that power revenues can’t be used to pay for Click’s telecommunications expenses – but what portion of those costs can be fairly allocated to telecommunications expenses remains the big question.

So what next?

Because of the lawsuit, the City Council and TPU board announced in early 2018 that they would drop the all-in plan – according to a Citizen Tacoma interview with TPU board member Bryan Flint, it’s dead and isn’t likely to be revived. At that time, there was hope that dropping the all-in plan would be looked on favorably by the court.

Now, the city is seeking a private partner to operate Click, and received six bids last year from companies hoping to take it over (they included Rainier Connect, Advanced Stream and – gasp – Wave Broadband). But policymakers are stressing this time that the network is not for sale, and have said whoever they choose to run the business will have to commit to net neutrality, keeping the network affordable for low income customers, protecting customer privacy, open access, and a number of other policy goals.

Three of those six companies were chosen to move forward in the process, and have begun negotiations with the city: Rainier Connect, Wave Broadband (which was recently bought by a San Francisco private equity firm), and Europe-based Yomura Fiber.

Flint says the TPU board and City Council expect to see a proposal from Wave soon.

“What I’ll be looking for is things like, how do we get out of that when they change their business model in a way that’s not advantageous for us, or they’re sold, or they go out of business, or their customer service is terrible and we’re frustrated?” Flint said.

“What’s key to me is we meet as many of those 12 policy goals … as we can and some of the most important ones are the public ownership and net neutrality and access for low income, and that we have a good exit strategy should they fail to perform or they’re not serving the customers.”

This article was originally published for members-only before being made available to the public. If you want to see articles when they’re published, please join Channel 253 as a member and help us sustain and grow our podcasts, events, and now written reporting!