Pasco city planner oversaw a historic decade of growth. Now, he plans to retire

City planning is slow work.

But stick around long enough and you get to see the fruits of your labor.

For the last 14 years, as Pasco’s director of Community and Economic Development, Rick White has helped lead city planning efforts to transform the city into a major economic hub. He’s seen first hand how industry can grow in tandem with population.

“Looking back, I’m thinking Pasco didn’t pack a lot of weight regionally. I think that’s really changed in the past 15 years or so,” he told the Tri-City Herald. “We’re pushing close to Kennewick’s population and my guess is that in four or five years Pasco may be the largest of the Tri-Cities.”

But White will not be at the helm when that day comes.

The city department head plans to retire at the end of the month — on April 30 — according to a recent announcement from the city. Fire Chief Bob Gear also plans to retire, his last day effective May 31.

“Mr. White has been instrumental in shaping the rapid development that has yet to slow in his time with Pasco,” said interim City Manager Adam Lincoln in a recent statement. “Mr. White and Chief Gear will be greatly missed, but their service will be remembered for years!”

Their exits are just the latest from top officials at Pasco City Hall. Late last year, Dave Zabell retired after leading the city for eight years as its city manager.

“I vacillate between a whole bunch of giddiness from retirement and this worry-wart syndrome,” White said of his and other recent departures.

He plans to stick around the next three months to help the Community and Economic Development Department transition. The city will likely soon conduct a search for his replacement.

White says he and his family will remain in Pasco, though plan to spend parts of the year on the Spanish coast starting in 2024.

His annual salary is $169,041. And Gear makes $193,294, which is higher than the city’s listed 2023 salary schedule because he has been on a supplemental employment agreement since 2016.

Annexation battles and booming businesses

As director of economic development, White has his hands in several buckets. Part of his job is helping support the city council, planning commission, the historic preservation commission, the code enforcement board and the hearing examiner with their work.

“We’re not putting out fires, we’re not arresting criminals, we’re taking a real clear look at things that need to be decided now to benefit later,” he said. “I think a lot of what I do and what I consider a very important part of the job is to make sure our commission and our boards know how important their work is.”

After graduating from Eastern Washington University, White got a job at Spokane County Planning doing mostly field work and surveying short plats. He came to the Tri-Cities in the 1980s, taking a position with the City of Kennewick before starting his tenure with Pasco.

White is particularly proud of the work his department did planning for the city’s industrial properties and ensuring the infrastructure was there for those properties to develop into robust revenue generators. The business park around Reser’s Fine Foods is nearly full, White said, and the city continues to support construction of Amazon’s twin, two-million-square-feet warehouses.

White’s first day on the job at Pasco included a great deal of work over a proposed hot mix asphalt plant that Central Pre-Mix wanted to install at its Harris Road site.

The project received a great deal of push back, with some arguing it would impede on nearby residential development, and a decision by the city planning commission was appealed to the superior court, according to archived Herald reports.

“That was day 1 and it actually ended up being settled. They received a special permit with dozens of conditions for the plant, but they never did install it,” White said.

He also looks back on the doughnut hole annexation battles that took place in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Some residents living around Argent and Road 68 proposed the creation of a new city called “Riverview,” population 4,000, to impede encroaching urbanization and city annexation.