PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson Transit Authority has opened an internal recruitment process for its general manager position because Tammi Rubert has announced plans to retire.
Rubert, 59, will leave the job in mid-April, Board Chair David Faber said Tuesday.
“After 30 years of public service, it’s time to retire and spend time with my parents,” Rubert said Wednesday.
Her last day will be April 15, although she will take leave and be available to help an interim replacement until June 1, Rubert said.
The search will be on an “aggressive” timeline, with hopes of identifying an internal interim candidate and finalizing negotiations by March 29 to include a two-week overlap with Rubert next month, said Faber, the Port Townsend mayor.
At the same time, the board plans to request qualifications from search firms and aims to make it a package deal with more than one position expected to be open.
“There’s a certain need to make sure there’s stability within the organization,” Faber said of the search.
In addition to any vacancy a promotion from within would create, Finance Manager Sara Crouch told the board Tuesday she plans to resign May 4.
Crouch said she’s enjoyed working for the transit agency for the past 11 years.
“We have accomplished mountain-climbing things,” she said. “There’s been a lot of stress involved, and I’ve lost my mother during this process. I just decided that it’s time to be closer to my family, so I’m moving back east.”
For the interim general manager position, the board will solicit letters of interest and resumes from internal candidates through March 11, and it plans to conduct a special meeting at 4:30 p.m. March 17 that would include public interviews. An executive session likely would follow and a preferred candidate could be identified by the end of the meeting.
Meanwhile, the board may ask a selected search firm to bring back internal and external candidates for the permanent GM position in May.
Interviews would be scheduled for June and a projected start date would be in July, Faber said.
Kate Dean, who sits on the transit board as part of her duties as a Jefferson County commissioner, said a variety of stakeholders want to encourage internal advancement within the organization. They also want the GM to be the face of the agency and embedded in the community, she said.
Dean said Rubert took over when the county was still feeling the effects of the recession, and its finances were in “pretty bad shape.”
“Tammi brought the organization from a dismal financial standing to a place where it’s very strong, in a new building, with plans to expand and being well-positioned for the future of transit,” Dean said.
Rubert has led Jefferson Transit since July 2011, when she was hired from her position as the agency’s operations manager, a job she held for a year. She previously worked for the agency in customer service and started with the organization as a driver in 2006.
“Tammi has done a phenomenal job of leadership,” Crouch said. “The staff that we have now, all of our department heads are fantastic, and we’ve worked well together.”
Rubert said one of her first tasks was to envision how to build the current transit center building on Four Corners Road.
A state rural mobility grant helped double parking from 50 to 100 spaces and added a bike barn on site, she said, and a partnership with East Jefferson Fire Rescue includes the fire district fueling all its vehicles on site.
“We also purchased the property next door and we’re in the middle of building a new facilities maintenance building, and also a third maintenance bay,” Rubert said.
The agency recently completed its long-range plan, driving future uses of transit, including reducing its carbon footprint with plans for electric buses, she said.
Financially, Rubert said the agency didn’t have any reserves when she started, and now she characterized it as “stabilized.”
“The board held the line when we were getting a lot of requests to add services,” she said. “It’s a combination of financial policies and careful planning that allowed us to stabilize our agency, and we are very strong now.”
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