Nestled against Point Defiance Park and Commencement Bay at the end of Pearl Street sits Ruston, Wash. Half a square mile, 750 or so residents, and some of the most prime real estate in the South Sound, Ruston’s beauty and small-town character is matched only by the town’s mind-boggling political dysfunction.



Ruston may very well be the most politically screwed up little town in the state. If nothing else, it’s making a case for it. The story and history of Ruston — specifically how the town has come to find itself embattled in neighbor-on-neighbor contentiousness and bizarre political fisticuffs — is long and faceted. There’s no easy answer to Ruston’s woes. The drama has been developing and unfolding for so long that getting to the root of the matter seems like a Herculean task. More important for Ruston is solving it.



Condos. The Fire Department. Annexation. An outspoken, unapologetic councilman. A group of “old-timers.” A slow moving mayor. And a power hungry and arrogant Town Council.

All of these play a part in Ruston’s political ugliness.

   

The Commencement

“The open warfare really began with the Commencement. Nothing really got ugly until then.” — Karen Picket, Ruston resident



In 2005 the town of Ruston sold 1.25 acres of land to the Ruston Landing Group for $4.25 million. It’s a picturesque parcel overlooking Commencement Bay. It’s also the site of Ruston’s historic schoolhouse. A condo complex is being erected there. The new building’s steel skeleton is a massive and growing reminder of the changing times in Ruston. The Commencement, as the condo project has come to be known, is where things started going terribly wrong.



To understand Ruston you must understand the town’s past. There would be no Ruston without William Ross Rust. It was his Tacoma Smelter and Refining Company that — along with contaminating the soil and groundwater with alarming amounts of arsenic, lead and cadmium — made Ruston possible. Stop into Don’s Ruston Market on just about any afternoon and you’re still likely to run into a group of old-timers who fondly remember when traffic backed up at quitting time at the Asarco Smelter. As longtime resident Fred Byzinker told me plainly, the smelter was Ruston’s sugar daddy. The city was built as a working-class town, and the Asarco Smelter was the reason a town of 750 people, across the street from Tacoma, was able to remain independent.



Ruston’s Asarco sugar daddy shut down in 1985. The 562-foot stack was eventually toppled, and all of Ruston’s kids were eventually tested for contaminants. Life went on in Ruston, but the money stopped flowing. Funding things such as a police force and fire department started to take a toll. Without Asarco, the question of Ruston’s future and whether the town would be able to economically sustain itself came to the forefront.



It was simple. If Ruston wanted to stay Ruston and continue to operate as a town separate from Tacoma, it was going to need money.



Enter the Ruston Landing Group, talk of condos, fierce and heated debate among neighbors, and eventually then-Mayor Kim Wheeler’s signature on a contract tying Ruston’s future to a six-story condo project in the middle of town. Strangely enough, though the Commencement effectively split the town into rival factions, many old-timers supported the development as a necessary evil to sustain Ruston’s independence. Some of the most adamant objections came from relative newcomers.



The lines in Ruston’s cadmium-laced soil had been drawn. You either supported the Commencement condo project or you didn’t. Those who didn’t organized. What ensued was a massive and angry grab for power — forcing Mayor Wheeler out and building a majority in the Town Council opposed to the Commencement, a majority that still stands today.



Michael Transue was the mayoral candidate to whom those opposing the Commencement turned. He was elected Ruston’s mayor in 2005.

How quickly things change

Mayor Transue sounds like a reasonable and competent man when you talk to him. Like any respectable small-town political leader, he has genuine passion to do what’s right for the city. 

In 2005 Transue was the candidate in Ruston’s mayoral election who was not Kim Wheeler. Wheeler, after being the catalyst behind the Commencement project, found himself at the center of intense criticism. He also found himself on the short end of a vote that displayed a pissed off and savvy political force was taking hold in Ruston. In a town of 750, if you get enough people organized in the same direction, it’s not difficult to have a major voice.



Transue was elected with support from many of the current members of Ruston’s Town Council, because he wasn’t the one who sold Ruston’s historic skyline for $4.25 million.

But in 2006 Transue, who has since been widely criticized by Ruston’s Town Council for alleged lack of leadership, proved he wouldn’t be the person to stop the Commencement. When the Ruston Landing Group defaulted on a portion of its contract with the city of Ruston that summer, those who vehemently opposed the Commencement, including a few who belonged or currently belong to Ruston’s five-seat Town Council, saw a perfect opportunity to erase the Commencement mistake. Transue, who has demonstrated an amazing ability to exercise extreme caution at all costs, disagreed. Work on the Commencement continued. It was what can only be called a major turning point. Since then, it’s been Mayor Transue vs. the Ruston Town Council in a no holds barred, small-town cage match. The two sides have sparred routinely, usually about budget issues, causing Ruston’s political progress to be tediously slow and mired in resentment. It’s hard to get much done when you spend all of your time trying to screw your enemy.



“There was nothing I could do about the Commencement. That was a deal that was done. It was legally binding,” said Transue.



“I think on some level some folks may have been disappointed that I couldn’t exercise some sort of discretion that they thought I had to revoke the building permit.



“In terms of (the Council’s) unwarranted criticisms about ways I go about things, I don’t know what’s driving them. I’m an independent thinker. I don’t and won’t do things just because some of the members of the Council want me to.



Naturally, Ruston’s Town Council sees things differently.



“I haven’t figured out what he thinks our role is. I would be interested to know. To the best I can tell he doesn’t think we have any role,” said Councilman Dan Albertson of Transue.



“There ought to be some communication between the mayor and the Council about what the goals are in the town and how we get there. Since I’ve been on the Council there is little to no communication with the mayor.”



“(The Council isn’t) exactly against the mayor; we’re just against his complete lack of responsibility running this town,” offered Bradley Huson, the Ruston Town Council’s most controversial member.



The citizens of Ruston are caught between the two. While both sides — the council and mayor — claim Ruston’s best interest as their motivation, the ferocity of the fight suggests most of Ruston’s 750 residents probably sit somewhere in the middle. The fighting has become so bad that four Ruston Town Council members have resigned in recent months, all claiming Transue’s lack of leadership as the reason. The high turnover rate on Ruston’s Town Council, akin to an Arby’s, has helped create a highly influential voting block consisting of Councilmen Albertson, Huson and Wayne Stebner. Stebner and Huson were both elected.

Albertson was appointed to his position after a resignation. They’re all opposed to the Commencement, and they all seem intent on making Transue rue the day he allowed the condos to continue.



“I think they’re power hungry and driven to be in control,” Ruston resident Karen Picket said of Albertson, Huson and Stebner.



“Whenever anything crosses that, they’re going to go in for the kill. I don’t think they have a firm vision. The only thing I see is a personal vendetta against people who haven’t agreed.”

Councilman Albertson bristles at the idea that there’s a voting block of himself, Huson and Stebner working toward a shared and secret vision for Ruston.



“I doubt it. We’ve never gotten together and discussed a shared vision. There’s an effort to view us differently than Councilman (Jim) Hederick, but if you go back and look at the votes, I’d venture to say most of them are unanimous.”



With one of the Town Council’s five seats currently vacant, Hederick is the lone unaffiliated voice in Ruston’s fracas. Above all of the shouting, it’s hard to hear him. He classifies the current political mind-set of the city’s government as “flat-out arrogant.”

Rules of Engagement and the hatred of Bradley Huson

At the heart of nearly every battle in Ruston sits one issue: whether or not Ruston will remain Ruston. While no one side openly advocates the city joining Tacoma, the Town Council often draws the ire of local citizenry for actions and decisions they see as precursors to such a move. The old-timers who supported the Commencement project and see the $4.25 million (along with revenue from future developments such as Point Ruston) as the needed monetary influx to sustain the city have trouble understanding how officials could now be once again questioning whether expenditures such as the Ruston Fire Department and Police Department are fiscally sustainable. Public services such as the Ruston Fire Department and Police Department are the reason they supported the Commencement, after all. The Commencement was supposed to be Ruston’s new sugar daddy.



A study session on Jan. 14 regarding the future of Ruston’s Fire Department exemplifies the anger many within Ruston’s community harbor for the Town Council. The fallout has been the purest display of the city’s dysfunction to date. After Councilmen Albertson and Stebner engaged in debatably secret (depending on whom you ask) preliminary talks with city of Tacoma officials with the intent of reaching an agreement to contract Ruston’s firefighting work to Tacoma, citizens showed up en masse to loudly voice their disgust. The actions of Albertson and Stebner, which many within Ruston found deceitful and treasonous, ignited people’s emotions, already frayed by the constant threat of a Tacoma annexation. At the Jan. 14 study session, anger from both sides boiled over. The shouting match that followed is likely one of the lowest points in the history of small-town government.



But Councilman Huson would not be outdone.



Following the public shouting match between enraged members of the community and a Town Council ruled by the voting block of Huson, Albertson and Stegner, Huson introduced and passed “Rules of Engagement” at Ruston’s next Council meeting. In the stated interest of getting things accomplished, Rules of Engagement prohibit public comment before any vote of the Ruston Town Council. Instead 15 minutes are set aside at the end of every meeting where members of the community wishing to comment are allotted two minutes apiece. If for some reason the Council meeting runs long, the comment section is dropped from the agenda. To Huson, the move was a necessary tool in restoring order to the city. To any right-minded American, concerned citizen of Ruston or believer in the democratic ideals this country was founded on, the move could be seen as nothing but abhorrently autocratic.

In defense of his Rules of Engagement, which were supported by Stebner and Albertson, Huson wastes little time making his contempt for those who oppose him blatantly obvious.



“They may be old-timers, but this town is being run into the ground by people who are too stupid to make the right decision,” said Huson of those who supported the Commencement project.



“I’m sick of listening to those people. I don’t like it when people who are stupider than me try to ram something down my throat. It leaves me with a really bad taste in my mouth.



“Those people have no idea how to act in public. I had to remind everyone what a town council meeting is. It’s not the mayor’s meeting. It’s not a general public council meeting. It’s a town council meeting. It is a business meeting to conduct business for the town council by the people who were elected. If the people don’t like that, they should stay home,” Huson continued.



“This whole stream of consciousness bulls*** that’s going on amongst all the idiots (at town council meetings) who ramp one another up in public comment is over. For those who attend town council meetings who can read and write, I’d suggest they drop a note in my mailbox if they have something to say.”

A vision for Ruston?

“What we have is so valuable,” said Pickett of Ruston, “It’s worth trying to heal.”



Researching the political quagmire in Ruston and talking with residents who call the half square mile home makes one thing obvious. The majority of Ruston is not represented by Huson, Albertson and Stebner. Nor is it represented by Mayor Transue or even the old-timers who raise hell at town council meetings. The majority of Ruston is stuck between all of this ugliness. The majority of Ruston’s residents care about maintaining their small town and are embarrassed by the negative press that public record tirades, less than honest representatives, and childish political name-calling has drawn them.



The majority of Ruston just wants to be civil.