Tacoma council nearing vote on whether to keep TPU director

Tacoma’s highest paid city employee could find out Tuesday (Sept. 22) if he will keep his job.

The Tacoma City Council is scheduled to vote on the reconfirmation of Tacoma Public Utilities Director Bill Gaines. TPU oversees departments responsible for the city’s power generation, water supply and rail service.

If the council votes against reconfirming Gaines, he loses his job, City Attorney Elizabeth Pauli said Monday.

Councilmen Robert Thoms and Joe Lonergan said last week that they plan to vote for reconfirmation.

“I believe by and large the utilities are well-run,” Lonergan said.

Other council members could not be reached or have declined to say publicly how they will vote. The council has held a number of closed-door meetings to talk about the utility director’s performance.

Pauli said Gaines needs at least five votes to be reconfirmed. One supporter, Marilyn Strickland, has indicated she won’t be present for the vote because she plans to attend an event in Seattle to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to the region Tuesday night.

This is the first year the council has had a say in the utility director’s job performance after voters approved a change to the city charter last year. The change says the council must confirm all new appointments for the director post, and reconfirm the appointment every two years.

TPU’s overall revenues amounted to $569 million last year, but it’s the management of Click Cable TV, which earned $27 million last year, that has earned Gaines critics.

In June the five-member TPU board voted unanimously to keep Gaines, though several residents expressed frustration with a proposal to lease Click’s infrastructure to an outside company for 40 years.

Click has around 93 employees who would lose their jobs if the city leases it to another company. Most of its workforce is unionized, and the Pierce County Central Labor Council is rallying members to attend Tuesday’s council meeting in hopes the council will decline to reconfirm Gaines.

The TPU Board reviews the director’s performance every year and provides goals for improvement. In his 2014 review, Gaines earned high marks for most areas, especially for his skill in finance. A 2013 review comment says financial management is his strongest area and that he’s saved the ratepayers “millions of dollars.”

However, the reviews said Gaines should work on communication, especially with the City Council.

In 2013, Gaines called out the city manager for telling residents that the utility could “mitigate” potential rate increases tied to a utility-related tax to fix Tacoma’s roads. Any extra costs, Gaines argued, would make utilities cost more money, which TPU would then be obligated to try to recover from customers. The city manager later amended his messaging to voters, saying it would make utilities cost more.

Alluding to the political tussle, Gaines’ 2013 review said his relationship with the council “went backwards,” and the director “needed to do more to demonstrate that utility management was neutral” in the issue, then called Proposition 1.

Gaines makes $338,229 and receives a $50,000 annual pension benefit. His contract states he would receive an amount equal to his annual salary as severance if he was fired without cause.

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Tacoma council nearing vote on whether to keep TPU director."