City of Tacoma reviews

The people are great to work with. For the most part, we are united as one giant team.

There is one big political agenda. Decisions are driven by City Council and a lot of times those decisions are outside of standard policies and are citizen requests (think squeaky wheel). For example, equity is a huge topic right now and making sure we pave streets evenly throughout the City and not just focus on one neighborhood is critical. We have KPI's and report tto the public that we have steps in place to ensure the upgrades and improvements are spread out evenly. One day a member of the city council will contact a director and say "so and so's road needs paved. Make it happen" and they do it! Because they have to! But there are time where "so and so" is a relative or friend of said councilmember OR it's an annoying citizen who complains daily and they are tired of hearing about it. That goes against EVERYTHING the City says it stands for. Also, there are a lot of employees, particularly office staff, who are union represented and management fears them and will not hold them accountable. It is as if a Union employee can be the worst employee ever and get away with it, while the non-represented are working harder and not getting recognized or getting laid off due to budget cuts because management is to scared to deal with the Union. A lot of really messed up things happen at the city. One really bad thing that I will never forget was that because the new City Manager was African American, he forced all employees to essentially give black employees and potential hires special attention and preferential treatment over everyone else, regardless of if they were a minority or not. That sounds absurd, but its true. I have a handbook that was drafted by the City Manager that essentially said hire anyone black, but only hire anyone else after you've interviewed xx amount of black people regardless of their experience.

Salary and benefits are very nice. You have to pay for parking at most locations.

Working as a Team

Dangerous sometimes

When a deal comes together and we all share success