Tacoma Public Utilities
Jackie Flowers is the CEO of Tacoma Public Utilities.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: What is Tacoma Public Utilities?
Jackie Flowers: Tacoma Public Utilities is the organization for which I am Director/CEO. We are a department of the City of Tacoma, and we have three operating divisions that provide services both in the city of Tacoma and then beyond city limits into Pierce County, so we have a broader service territory.
We've got Tacoma Power as our power arm, Tacoma Water, and Tacoma Rail. Tacoma Rail is a short line rail that services largely the port of Tacoma and the industrial customers in that area, but both Tacoma Power and Tacoma Water have footprints in and out of the city.
Roughly half the customers are inside, and half are outside city limits in Pierce County. We cross into other communities, both providing retail service, sometimes as a franchise, and then other times we're providing wholesale service to maybe a distribution only system that the smaller cities will manage. We have about a hundred and seventy thousand power customers, a hundred thousand water customers, and fourteen hundred employees in the organization.
We have a mayor and city council of Tacoma and they appoint our Public Utility Board. We have a five-member Board of Public Utilities, which serves as our policy, strategy, oversight arm.