PORT TOWNSEND — A veteran employee of Jefferson Transit will become its next manager, though she is not the person originally offered the job.
After negotiations with driver Mike Pollack to take over as Jefferson Transit’s general manager collapsed, the transit board offered the job to Tammi Rubert, another employee of the regional bus service, on Friday.
She accepted Tuesday, said transit board Chairwoman Catherine Robinson.
The employment contract was signed and is now in the hands of the transit system’s attorney, Rubert said.
The board selected Pollack as general manager June 27 and began negotiations.
No agreement was reached.
“We could not come to mutually agreed-upon terms [with Pollack],” said Robinson, who is also a Port Townsend City Council member and who conducted the negotiations with fellow transit board member Phil Johnson, a Jefferson County commissioner.
Pollack continues to work as a bus driver for Jefferson Transit, Robinson said.
“He’s been a bus operator, and he did not leave that position,” she said.
Neither Robinson nor Jefferson County Commissioner David Sullivan, a member of the transit board, would comment on the sticking points of negotiations with Pollack.
Rubert will receive a $72,348 salary, the middle of a predicted range of $63,397 to the $85,773.
“Tammi learned about Jefferson Transit from the inside and has worked in every aspect of the agency,” Sullivan said.
Rubert, 49, began as a permanent driver in January 2006.
She worked in customer service from July 2008 to October 2009, when she was named mobility coordinator.
She took over as training and services supervisor twice, filling in when Pollack was working on the bridge project and again from November 2009 to July 2010 when she became operations manager.
Pollack has piloted buses at Jefferson Transit for the past 10 years.
He also served as the training and service supervisor from January 2006 to November 2009, some of that time serving as coordinator of the Hood Canal project to plan for and manage the bus service during the time the floating bridge was closed in the summer of 2009.
On Tuesday, Rubert said one of her first priorities is to hire a new operations manager “to keep everything moving during this time of transition.”
She doesn’t plan any immediate changes to the agency, saying she seeks to maintain the status quo.
“It is important that we keep our strong team in place,” she said.
In February, voters approved a 0.3 percent sales tax increase to support Jefferson Transit that would protect existing service routes with no layoffs.
The county began collecting the tax revenue July 1. The agency will begin receiving the money in September.
With the passage of the initiative, Rubert said, the transit system is “stable.”
After General Manager Peggy Hanson resigned in March after having served one year on the job, the transit board named Port Angeles Mayor Dan Di Guilio interim manager until a replacement could be found.
Robinson said the transit board decided to conduct an in-house recruitment for the general manager following Hanson’s resignation.
One reason the board decided to hire from within was to save money by not doing a regional and national recruitment.
“We did look inside transit for financial reasons, but we also thought we had available people, so it was not solely financial,” Robinson said.
Port Angeles Mayor Dan Di Guilio, a retired Clallam Transit general manager, has served as manager on an interim basis following Hanson’s resignation.
Hanson, 53, was earning $85,000 a year.
Rubert will be taking two weeks of earned vacation before beginning as general manager Aug. 15.
She does not know when Di Guilio plans to step down but said she expected there would be some overlap during the transitional period.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
Philip L. Watness is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend. He can be reached at whatnews@olypen.com.