Month: July 2017

To be clear, I am not a fisherman.  My grandfather was a legend out of Horsehead Bay in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Many folks would see his boat heading out and see it as a sign that fish were running.  I chose this week’s blog title because of the image it conveys to me – time out on the water, away from the cares and pressures of work. While I won’t be fishing while I'm on vacation, I will be joining friends on their boat and cruising the San Juan Islands.  If you have never been there in the summer, I would encourage you to add it to your bucket list.  The San Juan Islands are a very special place of natural beauty, great for boating, biking and…

  Although we’re only seven months through the year with a recently approved Supplemental Budget for 2017, we are already keenly focused on the 2018 budget. For 6 to 8 hours each week, members of our Executive and Finance teams are meeting with department directors to review their budgets, discuss proposed new initiatives and evaluate process improvements.  We’re asking lots of questions and having great conversations about ways to enhance the services we provide our residents.  At the same time, we are looking hard at the resources – prioritizing expenditures so that we can make new investments in key priority areas for our citizens and our employees. These reviews are in the window-less conference room on the 7th Floor, so it keeps us focused on the budget and not distracted…

This week’s blog is warm and sunny – just like the amazing weather we’ve been enjoying recently. It was inspired by the recent baby bonanza we’ve been experiencing on the 7th floor of the County City Building.  I’d swear there is something in the water around here.  We’ve had six babies born in recent months – three in the last week, alone! Baby Blair Although she was born in March, I wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to talk about my first grandchild, Blair.  She is pictured here (in the stroller) with her new BFF, Evie (in the front pack), as well as our dog, Bosco.  Lauren and I were fortunate enough to draw babysitting duty while all the parents took a break.  We happily took them for a walk…

You can learn a lot from a person, when you spend 7 hours on a Friday night riding in a patrol Tahoe. The lessons I learned from Deputy Fred Wiggins will linger -- long past the time we recently spent together on the swing shift. For those of you who have not met him, Deputy Wiggins is a 4-year veteran of our Pierce County Sheriff’s Department (PCSD).  Previously, he spent 10 years with the Department of Corrections and is a proud WSU grad – are there any other kind of WSU grads? Teamwork The importance of teamwork was made crystal clear when Deputy Wiggins received a call to do a welfare check on a 1-year-old in a home known to have multiple felons connected to it.  Deputy Wiggins knew the…