Pacific’s new mayor sets city out on road to recovery
Jul 15, 2013, 5:30 AM | Updated: 7:30 am
The write-in candidacy and experiment of Mayor Cy Sun ended last week in Pacific when the recall election results were certified. Now an even bigger challenge lies ahead for the small town: digging out of 18 months worth of damage and putting the community back together.
There is a lot of bad blood in the town of 6,800 that sits on the King-Pierce County line. A lot of people picked sides during Mayor Sun’s tenure.
A year and-a-half of in-fighting, finger-pointing and having a somewhat loose cannon in the mayor’s office can do that.
But just hours after being sworn in as the new mayor, city council woman Leanne Guier went to work. Mayor Guier hired two police officers, started looking at candidates for other vacant positions and began to look at the city budget.
“We still need to get our finances in order,” the new mayor said. “We haven’t had our actual budget numbers in front of us. We need to hire a public works director. We also need a city clerk.”
But filling those positions will only help the city run efficiently. Mayor Guier knows there’s more at stake.
“Probably the most important thing I want to do is start mending this community,” she said.
She started that on Friday, her first official day in office, by sitting in the mayor’s office with the door wide open, something that never happened with her predecessor, and taking questions from anyone who wanted to stop by.
“To see the rift and the dissension in our city is heartbreaking,” Mayor Guier said. “It’s been really tough to deal with. That’s all behind us. I don’t want to dwell on it. I don’t want to go there.”
But what took less than two years to nearly destroy, Mayor Guier said will probably take a lot longer than that to rebuild.
“I wish it was tomorrow, but it will take a while,” she said. “It will probably take a couple years to get everything completely cleaned up and taken care of.”
The city began mending fences over the weekend as it held the annual Pacific Days celebration with Mayor Guier out in front.
