Former Gig Harbor administrator Wade Farris takes new job in Chelan

Former Gig Harbor city administrator Wade Farris has a new job as interim city administrator of Chelan, a city of about 4,000 in eastern Washington.

Farris was hired during a special session of the Chelan City Council last Monday, according to Lake Chelan Now, a local news site.

A retired Air Force general, Farris resigned as city administrator in Gig Harbor in July, 2019 after accusations by a women employee that he treated women “differently” than men. He had been placed on leave by Mayor Kit Kuhn a month previously.

In Chelan, Farris will replace Mike Jackson, who left in December. Farris was a finalist for the job when Jackson was hired in 2016, according to Lake Chelan Now. He has ties to the area, including land in the Methow Valley, the site said. Before coming to Gig Harbor, Farris was city administrator for Othello, another eastern Washington town.

Farris is working as an interim administrator under a contract with Prothman Executive Recruitment. During an open interview with the council and Chelan mayor Bob Goedde, he indicated interest in pursuing the job on a permanent basis, accordng to Lake Chelan Now.

“I’m looking for an opportunity to make a difference,” he told the council.

Farris, 67, resigned from his $158,000-a-year job after he was accused by an employee of “treating women differently than men” and by another person of asking an “improper question” during a job interview.

But the accusations were vague, and the woman who complained was never identified.

In an interview with The Gateway, Farris adamantly denied being disrespectful of the women who worked for him. He said he was still mystified by the accusations, which seemed to him to be trivial.

“One allegation was that I listened to men’s stories more than women’s,” he said. “Another was that I had a ‘command presence.’ They were all on that level.”

The job interview question was “a lawyer joke, made in jest, that had nothing to do with women,” he said.

Some people in City Hall thought Farris’s ouster had more to do with an uneasy relationship with the mayor than problems with women.

Farris would only say that the mayor was “sometimes a little hard to work with.”

This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 4:39 PM.