So long, Doris: City clerk’s tireless work for Tacoma spanned more than four decades
If you’ve watched a Tacoma City Council meeting in the past few decades, in person or via a broadcast, you may not recognize this city official’s name in print, but you would know the voice instantly.
Doris Sorum, Tacoma’s city clerk, has patiently introduced and read each agenda item into the record during council meetings for more than two decades, among her other many duties.
On Friday, she retired after 43 years of service with the City of Tacoma.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, council members past and present turned out to share memories and well-wishes to the long-serving clerk.
Sorum started working for the city of Tacoma in 1980, the same year Ronald Reagan was first elected president and before some current council members were even born.
“There’s not a day of my life that I have been on this Earth that Doris Sorum has not worked for the city,” Council member and Tacoma native John Hines, born in 1982, announced at the meeting.
Sorum, also a Tacoma native, started in the city’s finance department in 1980, and joined the clerk’s office later that decade, serving in multiple titles before being appointed city clerk Aug. 15, 2000.
The clerk’s official role includes attending “all meetings of the Council and (keep) a permanent journal of its proceedings,” according to the clerk’s profile page.
In the proclamation Tuesday honoring Sorum, her work also included long hours and chasing down last-minute items on Thursdays to add to the agenda, It noted she sometimes had to deliver agenda packets by taxi and worked through at least one council meeting that lasted until nearly 1 a.m. She also helped oversee three city charter reviews.
The proclamation, read by Mayor Victoria Woodards, noted Sorum’s “high standards and operational excellence,” which “often came in the form of shoe heel clicks on the marble floors of the Tacoma Municipal Building as she searched for the late agenda items on Thursday afternoon.”
She has also administered the official oath of office for five mayors, 40 council members and countless city employees, according to Tuesday’s proclamation.
Who was her favorite mayor? Sorum, who asked the question of herself when it came time for her to offer remarks, was silent.
“Did you really think I was going to answer that question?” she said, laughing.
Current Pierce County Council member Marty Campbell was among former Tacoma City Council members to offer their well-wishes at Tuesday’s send-off ceremony.
“When you come here as a city council member, we learn a lot from each other. We learn most of it from Doris,” Campbell said. “And the lessons we learn on how to run a meeting, how to remain calm when things are chaotic, how to ... just so much we take with us our entire lives. Thank you.”
Pierce County Council Chair and former Tacoma City Council member Ryan Mello added, “We cannot do public service and the work you all do on behalf of the people of Tacoma without people like Doris and Doris in particular.”
In public comments she also was praised for the clerk’s office work in helping to get council meeting information dating back decades online in partnership with the Tacoma Public Library.
Woodards also offered her congratulations, praising Sorum for setting “this whole city up to run the way that it does,” adding “I just say thank you. I’ve often said if I could speak several languages, I would say thank you to you in every single one of them and it wouldn’t be enough.”
Sorum walked the council attendees and TV viewing audience through her career, citing when she first really encountered the weight of the council and its work.
In charge of the mail machine used on site, she was instructed that the machine was to be shut off by 3 p.m. each day.
“One day this lady came down with a crazed look on her face and demanded I open the mail machine,” she recounted, “I said no. I am not going to get in trouble. Next thing I know here comes my boss telling me to open the mail machine. ‘These letters have to go out. It’s the City Council agenda for the City Council meeting.’”
“I said, ‘What’s a City Council agenda? And what’s the City Council?’” she recalled. “That sparked my curiosity.”
Years later, she added, “I took that lady’s position in the City Clerk’s office and I have had that crazed look on my face several times.”
She also found her calling in the work, she said.
After thanking former and current colleagues, she said she always loved the feeling of “getting out of school and knowing you have a whole summer to play. Well here I am about to get out of work and hopefully play for a lot longer than a couple months.”
She also offered advice for not only her successor but council members, present and future:
“Stay curious, answer the phone. Be there for each other and get your agenda items in on time,” she said in closing. “My heart is full, and cheers to you. Thank you.”
This story was originally published July 1, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
