I met with Ruston Councilman Jim Hedrick today at the Pritchard cafeteria in Olympia (where, in a completely unrelated story, Trib legislature guru Joe Turner was holding court). He expressed concern with how Ruston’s government functions, and the tensions among citizens.

He said he’s in an “obvious political minority” on the council. The other three councilmembers – Bradley Huson, Wayne Stebner and Dan Albertson – vote as a bloc, he said, and they love to flaunt their power.

“They clearly have contempt for the mayor,” he said. “And not because of the mayor’s stance on the Commencement as far as I can tell, but it’s because Michael isn’t going to sit in a group and let a few neighbors control everything.”

Divisive issues have split the town, including the Commencement condo building, the possibility of phasing out the fire department, other development and possible annexation to Tacoma. He believes some who oppose further development don’t see the future implications.

“I don’t think people realize the town is 100 years old, but it was tied to a huge industry connected to it,” he said. “The industry’s gone, and it has been for 23 years now. We’re not going to survive as a town unless we replace Stack. There’s no sales there, and we’re basically living on the property tax.”

He has big visions for the future of Ruston.

“I see the town kind of like how people talk about Fremont in Seattle,” he said. “It could be a really great thing, a destination spot where professionals want to move there. An urban village. At least I want to try to do that.

“But if we fail and we run the developers off, we’ll have to unincorporate. We can’t sustain ourselves on $3 million that we got from the Commencement.”

Some of the anger is justifiable, he said.

“There’s just a lot of contempt about how people are running the town,” he said. “It’s like an opera. Even before I got on the council, I was sitting in the audience and think, ‘All we’re trying to do is run a million-dollar enterprise.’ And nobody has the vision of what the future should be, and the this group that doesn’t want the Commencement, they don’t have a vision other than being against the Establishment. Except they are the Establishment now.”

Dan Albertson’s appointment to the council – he replaced Bob Pudlo, who resigned with two years left on his term – created doubt.

[More:]

“It’s not that they appointed Dan Albertson – it’s the way that it was done,” he said. “Nobody else ever had an opportunity. They just made the motion that night, and they were flaunting their power. They wanted everybody to see that they could put anybody on that council that they wanted to in the timeline they wanted to. Ruston is the only place in the world where if you lose an election – even if it’s by eight votes – it’s a mandate.”

Yesterday, Huston advocated for a city manager-style government to replace the strong-mayor system. It’s something Hedrick would consider.

“And at this point in our history, that might be the way to go,” he said. “At least you would have a professional, full-tim eperson administering, thinking of the future, being able to report, have some resources and make recommendations to the council to run the town. It can’t be that tough to hire a prosecutor, a personnel attorney, a town attorney, a planner.”

Dialogue can help the political impasse, he said.

“I seriously think we need to sit down and end the contempt for each other as the government,” he said. “There’s a plan for the Commencement. The developers are not going away. We need to have a relationship with the developers because they’re not going away. Quite frankly, they are the future of our town.”

And he showed flashes of optimism about the future.

“It’s my sincere hope that one day we’re going to be happy about the fact that it’s there for the money that it brings in and the diversity of people that it brings in,” he said. “We need to get everything together. I’m worried that for the next three years, you’ll have people coming into that condominium who are paying good money for the units, and they’re going to come to the council meeting and say, ‘What the hell have I gotten myself involved in?’ How are we going to be perceived b y those types of people? How are we going to welcome them to the community? That’s our biggest challenge.”