The longtime councilmember from tiny Fircrest weighs in on how Sound Transit is viewed in Pierce County, and the CEO selection process as he’s seen it unfold.
The Sound Transit board of directors has a new voice representing Pierce County, and he’s from a unsuspecting place. Hunter George, who has served on the Fircrest City Council since 2012, joined the 18-member Sound Transit board in early February after tapped by Pierce County’s new Executive, Ryan Mello. He replaces Puyallup Mayor Jim Kastama, and is now the member of the board representing the smallest jurisdiction, with just over 7,000 residents currently living in Fircrest.
Wedged in between Tacoma and University Place, 1.58-square-mile Fircrest doesn’t make headlines very often, and is probably most famous for being the last jurisdiction in the state to formally repeal a ban on serving alcohol instituted during the prohibition era, in 2016. But the city is set to be directly involved in a major Sound Transit 3 project in Pierce County, a six-station extension of the existing T Line between Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood and Tacoma Community College (TCC). That at-grade line is set to run along S 19th Street, which is the border Fircrest shares with Tacoma. Two stations are planned along the city line, at Pearl Street and the TCC terminus. Ultimately, construction is a ways off — a grand opening isn’t likely until 2039 at the earliest.
George joins the board at a major inflection point for Sound Transit, as the agency starts to juggle major design work on multiple Sound Transit 3 projects at the same time that it is preparing to open three new light rail extensions over the next two years. Plus, Sound Transit is set to get a new CEO by the end of this month, after a process that’s been shrouded in secrecy.
George isn’t alone in being a relative newcomer to the board, with five other positions turning over since the beginning of last year.
While Fircrest has skin in the game when it comes to ST3, George’s interests aren’t confined to the city’s borders. In an interview with The Urbanist, he described a long background in policy work in Pierce County, and experience working across multiple levels of government. By day George currently works at Metro Parks Tacoma, a parks district serving Tacoma and nearby unincorporated areas with its own independently elected board. Previously he worked as communications director for Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy, after a long career as a journalist at outlets like the Tacoma News Tribune.
But first questions first: Hunter George a transit rider? In short: not really. But he hopes that he can bring a fresh perspective to the board as someone who’s not super familiar with the regional transit system, but pledging to become a more regular rider.
“You certainly can describe me as an infrequent user. You can also describe me as a new user, because I’m using it now,” George said. “I’m on the rider experience committee, and I’m excited about that. I asked it to be on [that committee] and what I hope is that my perspective… I sort of view it as if I just moved here and I’ve got to figure this out. So I can tell you, I had a lot of trouble getting my first ORCA card and, again, I had a rider experience, and now I know how to do it.”
Pierce County has regularly gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to Sound Transit investments. The 1 Line isn’t expected to reach Tacoma Dome until 2035, after being initially promised in 2030. Train frequencies on the T Line extension to Hilltop, which opened in 2023, were reduced from the promised 10 minutes to 12 minutes after service started due to operational issues, and service on Sound Transit express buses to and from Pierce County have been scaled back since last year due to operator shortages at Pierce Transit, which operates the service.
Combine those issues with the fact that the 2016 Sound Transit 3 ballot measure was underwater in Pierce County and passed on the strength of support in King and Snohomish counties, and the result is a lot of transit frustration in the South Sound. George asked transit advocates in the rest of the region to keep this in mind, as board members in Pierce County — as well as in Snohomish County — continue to emphasize completing the “spine” that will deliver light rail to Tacoma and Everett.
“The bulk of the service is in King County, and you guys love it. They don’t love it here because there’s not enough of it. And I can tell you, I hear hatred of Sound Transit from many of my constituents — not all,” George said. “You’ve got people who should be really cool with it. They’ve paid — every year, when they pay those car tabs, they get pissed.”
Such disparate views of the agency from within different parts of the region will undoubtedly continue to be a major challenge. The Sound Transit board’s 2024 retreat was focused largely on recommitting the decision-making body to “regionalism” — an amorphous term that was used to connote putting broader considerations for transit riders and housing growth ahead of the interests of any individual city or county. While neither George nor Mello was on the board at that point, that seems to be a big reason that he was tapped to join the board.
“Ryan was looking for someone with skin in the game, and in particular, he and I have worked together for many, many years. And he knows that I think regionally,” George said. “He said, you think regionally, and you’ll be able to help us think about Fife and Tacoma and train service through Puyallup and into Lakewood and all that.”
As for the CEO selection process, which has proven controversial, George ultimately defended the way the board has conducted its interviews behind closed doors. With the news in mid-February that King County Executive Dow Constantine had not only submitted his name into the mix, but also advanced as one of five finalists, the agency faced strong criticism for a lack of transparency. The agency also used a nearly identical process for its last two CEO hires.
Constantine, meanwhile, has faced charges of a conflict of interest, given his long history with many board members, as the board’s longest-serving member who appointed half of the board in the first place. Meeting critics head-on, Constantine has defended his behavior as above board.
“I don’t love the process, and I’m not criticizing anyone for that,” George said. “When I joined the board, we were down to three. I think they were at five right before that, and then I got on and now there’s three, and so I participated in the interviews. And it sounds like we would have only had one if we hadn’t promised the confidentiality in the process — the other two we interviewed would not have applied. And so I don’t like it, but I think it was a necessary thing to do, that’s the only way to get a national search. Out of three, one’s going to get it, right? So if you’re in a major role somewhere, you don’t want to lame duck yourself.”
What does Sound Transit’s newest boardmember want to see from the next CEO?
“Seeing the whole board,” George said. “The CEO is not going to be the engineer who designs the thingamabob that makes the one train go faster. That’s not what you’re there for. It’s working with us to prioritize, because right now, it feels like there’s just so much going on. There’s so much being built, and there are these operational issues, and you gotta be able to balance that.”
George said a priority of the board’s Pierce County delegation is turning the agency’s focus toward operations. A disconnect between the segment of Sound Transit that builds new transit facilities and its transit operations division has been something transit advocates have been bringing up for a long time, but it looks to be coming to a head as the agency starts to stretch the light rail network into Snohomish County and East King County and more people start to use the system.
“It sure feels like there’s a universal recognition that we’ve spent a couple decades building and building and building, and yeah, we’re operating, but we’re really focused on the building, and with all the operational issues they’ve had — this came up quite a bit in the [CEO candidate] interviews — it’s got to be 50/50, we need to be equally as focused on building as we are on operating,” George said.
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including Capitol Hill Seattle, BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
