Another free ride for a Gig Harbor mayor is another sign to change form of government

In a year when a record number of people filed for office in Pierce County, what a pity that a culture of predetermined politics still prevails in some communities.

Consider Gig Harbor. Its mayor for the next four years is all but cinched before a single yard sign is posted, doorbell is rung or vote is cast in the 2021 election.

Tracie Markley had no opponents when she first ran for Gig Harbor City Council two years ago. Now she’s getting another free ride in her run for mayor.

That means the 44-year-old former parks commissioner will rise to the top leadership post in the Puget Sound’s second-fastest growing city without ever having her ideas stress-tested in an election campaign.

“I was very stunned,” she told us Monday, recounting how her phone blew up with congratulatory calls after the only other candidate withdrew in the final hour of filing week.

“How could this be happening twice?” the former real estate agent, loan officer and human resources consultant recalled thinking. “This must really be meant to be.”

Markley is an energetic candidate with good potential to reverse the fraught atmosphere under Kit Kuhn, the first-term mayor who opted not to run again.

But with all due respect, an uncompetitive election is never meant to be.

Pierce County can be proud that a total of 312 candidates filed to run for a local office this year — likely an all-time high, according to Auditor Julie Anderson.

So what gives in Gig Harbor?

That voters west of the Narrows Bridge are left without a choice for mayor provides two key takeaways.

First: The most critical leadership decision now falls to Markley herself. She must hire an experienced, responsive city administrator to rebuild employee morale and effectively run day-to-day operations. Amid a wave of staff turnover and legal settlements, a City Hall survey last year found more than 40 percent of employees were dissatisfied and didn’t feel respected by Kuhn’s administration.

The second lesson is less urgent but no less important: Gig Harbor voters shouldn’t miss the latest sign that their city has outgrown a strong-mayor form of government. They’d be wise to get behind a ballot measure and consider changing to a council-manager form.

Clearly if only one resident in a community of 11,000 is willing and feels able to lead, then it’s high time to professionalize local governance and switch to a city manager who’s accountable to the City Council.

Local municipalities as large as Tacoma and as small as Fircrest have city managers. As we said last summer in the throes of the Kuhn controversy, the move makes sense for Gig Harbor, too — for systemic reasons that ultimately matter more than individual personalities.

Gig Harbor isn’t the only Pierce County city still clinging to a strong-mayor system, nor is it alone in struggling to attract candidates. Sumner, Orting and Ruston are among others with uncontested mayor elections this year.

What’s remarkable about the Maritime City is its long history of mayors getting the Willy Wonka golden ticket. Only twice since 1993 has there been more than a single candidate in a mayor’s election. (Kuhn vs. Jill Guernsey in 2017 was one of the exceptions.)

Council member Jeni Woock recently helped lead an education campaign, hoping to spark residents’ interest in taking up a council-manager initiative. Now the 2021 ballot is set and it’ll have to wait, she told us. “I don’t see anything happening for a couple years.”

That’s OK. Putting distance between Kuhn’s reign and a possible new form of government will remove emotion from a debate that should be based on reason. But putting it off until the next leadership crisis isn’t a good idea, either.

Markley says that while she doesn’t support a system change, she trusts voters with the final word. So do we.

“Gig Harbor politics are always interesting,” she told us . “People ask me all the time, ‘Why do you want this job? Why do you want to take over this mess?’ ”

She doesn’t view it as a mess, she said, but she does want to bring healing to the city where she’s lived since she was 6 years old.

We wish her godspeed, though ideally it would wait until after Election Day.

News Tribune editorials reflect the views of our Editorial Board and are written by opinion editor Matt Misterek. Other board members are: Stephanie Pedersen, News Tribune president and editor; Matt Driscoll, local columnist; and Jim Walton, community representative. The Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom and does not influence the work of news reporting and editing staffs. For questions about the board or our editorials, email matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com