The man set to become Sumner’s next city administrator won’t have to familiarize himself with the community of some 9,500 residents.
John Galle was Sumner police chief for five years and filled in as city administrator temporarily after the former administrator departed in April amid conflict with the mayor.
The mayor now has picked Galle to take the administrator job permanently. The City Council this week approved a contract that awaits Galle’s signature.
Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow said Galle is a good fit for the job.
“He’s an extraordinarily capable administrator. He has a record of making things happen,” Enslow said.
Galle, 57, came to the city in 1997 as a patrol officer and worked his way through the ranks, becoming chief in fall 2007.
During his police tenure, he introduced the school resource officer program. As chief, he also reorganized the command structure to include a deputy chief position and oversaw the consolidation of emergency dispatch with neighboring Puyallup. Before coming to Sumner, he spent eight years at Tacoma Baptist School as a teacher and administrator.
Galle will make $10,190 per month as city administrator. The council voted 5-2 Monday to approve a contract, with council members Nancy Dumas and Randy Hynek against.
Dumas said she felt the city should have opened the position to a broader field of candidates. She also said she had concerns about Galle’s lack of experience running “all the facets of a city.”
Deputy Mayor Steve Allsop said he feels Galle is a proven administrator with credibility in the city.
Under Sumner’s form of government, the elected mayor is the chief executive while the city administrator oversees day-to-day operations. The seven-member City Council sets policy.
Sumner has the equivalent of about 100 full-time employees and a biennial budget totaling roughly $82 million.
When City Administrator Diane Supler left last spring, the city agreed to pay her $78,451, including severance and unused vacation and leave, under an agreement finalized in May.
Supler departed after an apparent breakdown in her relationship with Enslow.
In an April 11 letter to the mayor, an attorney for Supler wrote: “Ms. Supler has visited with me because of the changes in her working relationship with you. She is aware you have grown increasingly adamant about your role in the city government and the conflict that your efforts in that regard have caused to occur.”
The letter said Enslow had “engaged in confrontation” with Supler on several occasions and held a bias against her.
The attorney who wrote the letter stopped working for Supler after it was sent; her new attorney said he couldn’t comment on it. Supler couldn’t be reached to comment for this story.
Enslow, Sumner’s mayor since 2006, said in an interview that he didn’t have a bias against her, noting he hired her as city administrator in 2010. He said they didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but that’s not unusual in the workplace.
“I thought Diane was great,” he said, adding that he wished her well.
