Meet the Mayor
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Original Air Date: 11/19/2009
Meet the Mayor
Marilyn Strickland has been elected the new mayor of Tacoma. She brings experience to the position, having served on the Tacoma city council for the past two years.
But the mayor-elect inherits a city mired in recession and job loss. Pierce County currently has an unemployment rate of 8.8%, and Russell Investments, Tacoma’s largest private employer, has committed to move to Seattle by the end of 2010.
Along with the bad economy, Tacoma is wrestling with a crime rate that ranks among the top 5% in the country, a higher than average high school drop out rate, and the city has been alerted by the Environmental Protection Agency that its air quality is among the worst in the state.
During the campaign, Strickland was tagged as the education candidate. She has been quoted as saying that almost everything relates back to education, including crime, jobs, and economic development.
How will Mayor Strickland lead the city council to solve some of Tacoma’s biggest problems? What is her vision for the future of Tacoma? How will the city government reflect our interests as a community?
Guest
Marilyn Strickland - Mayor-elect, Tacoma
Marilyn Strickland was elected the mayor of Tacoma earlier this month, defeating challenger Jim Merritt in what became the most expensive mayors race in the city's history. She has served on the Tacoma city council for the last two years, holding an at-large seat. While on the council, she counts as one of her biggest accomplishments the founding of a collaboration with the city, Metro Parks, and the Tacoma school board called Tacoma 360. The collaboration will aim to curb illiteracy, homelessness, and the achievement gap in Tacoma.
View Strickland's campaign website here.
View the city council's website here.
Stats and Facts
Tacoma operates under the Council-Manager form of government. The City Council consists of an elected Mayor and eight elected Council Members (from five districts and three at-large). All serve four-year terms, with a two term limit.
According to the Pierce County Auditors office (as of November 19, 2009), the vote tally is:
| NP - Marilyn Strickland |
19,799 | 51.36% |
| NP - Jim Merritt | 18,650 | 48.38% |
| Write-In | 103 | 0.27% |
According to the News Tribune, the Marilyn Strickland garnered $146,237.38 for her campaign, and her challenger, Jim Merritt, raised $144,250.96. This makes the race the most expensive on record in the city's history.
According to neighborhoodscout.com, a resource that collects crime data, Tacoma has a violent crime rate of 10.47 per 1000 residents (state average is 3.69 and national is 4.7), which is over double the national average. Seattle, which has over double the population of Tacoma, has a violent crime rate 6.79 per 1000 residents. With a population of 193,500 people in Tacoma, 18,703 crimes (both violent and property related) will happen this year. That means almost 10% of the population will experience crime this year. This figure means that Tacoma is only safer than 2% of the other cities in the United States.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently (October 8, 2009) singled out Tacoma as having some of the worst air quality in the state of Washington. Tacoma was tabbed by the EPA as a “non-attainment area” for having too much fine particle air pollution, and the EPA is giving the city until 2014 to clean up its air.
According to the city's website, the B&O tax rates for Tacoma are:
| Retail | 0.00153 |
| Wholesale | 0.00102 |
| Manufacturing | 0.0011 |
| Service & Other | 0.0040 |
| Service & Other, Apportioned | 0.0040 |
| Retail Service | 0.0040 |
| International Investment | 0.00275 |
Interest rates for B&O taxes filed after the due date:
Assessments - 5% Refunds - 5%
Send your comments and questions to NorthwestNow@kbtc.org.
