City Manager Is A Man On The Move A Hometown Boy, Pupo Brings New Energy To Important Post

Considering he manages a $300 million annual city budget and 2,000 employees, Bill Pupo’s office is amazingly tidy.

The handful of papers on his desk are neatly stacked. A laptop computer is closed. Files are tucked inside their cabinets.

“I hate stuff sitting around,” says Spokane’s newly appointed city manager. “I keep things moving as fast as possible. I don’t let it collect dust.

“The city needs to keep moving.”

So does Pupo.

He darts about City Hall, clutching a water bottle, talking to employees and jotting notes to himself on 3-by-5 cards. His office staff dubbed him the “Energizer Bunny.” “He is always busy, all the time. He moves things out very quickly,” Pupo’s secretary, Joan Poirer, laughs. “Have you looked at my desk?”

“I’m having a blast,” says Pupo.

When City Council members chose a new top official on Feb. 11, they picked a homegrown boy.

Pupo, 43, was born and raised in Spokane, straying only during his college years - and then only as far as Seattle and Pullman. His resume lists a string of jobs since graduating in 1977, all with the city of Spokane.

With each step up the ladder, Pupo shortened his title: Assistant to the city manager. Assistant city manager. Acting city manager. City manager.

He is the antithesis of his predecessor, Roger Crum, who left the city in July to take a similar job in Evanston, Ill.

Where Crum was methodical, Pupo doesn’t like to dwell on details. Where Crum was quiet and reserved, Pupo is verbose, recalling that he got in trouble at school for talking in class. Where Crum often clung to the status quo, Pupo almost immediately shuffled the duties of several top employees.

Council members who found Crum slow to tell them about pending city business don’t have that problem with Pupo. He constantly updates them through meetings and memos. He loves all modes of communication - voice mail, electronic mail or face-to-face.

The fact that Pupo always is “on” can be both joy and curse to his employees. He admits he’s quick to delegate and wants things done in short order. “The world moves too slowly,” he says.

Pupo sees his job as conceptual. He draws the big picture while his staff adds colors and background. “I have all these great employees around here to put the plans to those concepts.”

Dave Mandyke, recently promoted to assistant city manager, sees Pupo’s results-oriented attitude as a plus. “He’s aggressive … He’s always looking for new ways to do things.”

Molly Myers, the city’s director of neighborhood services, also likes the quicker pace. “He’s decisive, and he pushes people around him to act accordingly,” she says.

A few Spokane officials worry that Pupo pushes too hard, sometimes leaving behind shoddy results and unhappy people.

“He has unrealistic expectations of what’s involved in carrying forth a plan, the research that’s involved, the time it takes to include other people in the discussion,” says one department head who requested anonymity. “We’re left to try and implement it, smooth the ruffled feathers that result from the ‘just do it’ attitude.”

“His high level of energy can be a deterrent,” says Councilwoman Phyllis Holmes. “He gets real enthused. But I’ve told him, ‘Don’t push us too hard. We don’t all move at the same rate.”’

Pupo’s parents immigrated separately from Italy, meeting and marrying in Chicago in the early 1950s before moving to Spokane’s Franklin Park area. William Pupo Sr. managed a liquor store in Hillyard. Ernesta Pupo worked part-time as a seamstress and for the Dominican Sisters.

Pupo and his younger sister went to Catholic schools, where they were lectured by Jesuits and nuns about leadership and social responsibility. He spent his afternoons playing baseball in Franklin Park or mowing his neighbors’ lawns for money.

He hung out with a close-knit group of mostly Catholic-Italian cohorts whose immigrant parents taught them to work hard and get a good education.

“Our parents set very high goals for us,” says Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza, a friend of Pupo’s at Gonzaga Prep. “They were very much dedicated to the belief that their children could accomplish much more than they could in their lives.”

Spokane resident John Clarizio grew up with Pupo and remembers him as an outgoing, popular guy who had a “heart as big as most people’s cars.”

Pupo was an average but extremely competitive athlete who didn’t let his small size hold him back, Clarizio says. “He was scrappy. He stood right in there all the time.”

An old girlfriend, Susan Marx Makaba of Los Angeles, remembers Pupo as a “sweetheart and a gentleman who was always really nice to my mom.” Makaba says he was responsible, taking good care of his car, a blue Oldsmobile known as the “gutless Cutlass.”

Pupo’s nickname was “Poops,” according to his high school yearbook. It lists a number of activities: basketball, baseball, football, cheerleader, student council, leadership, ski club.

During college, Pupo worked summers at the city’s Parks and Recreation Department on the “butt patrol,” cleaning up Riverfront Park. He got an unpaid internship with the city during his senior year, with his first task being to set up the city’s cable Channel 5.

Pupo was “ambitious and a go-getter,” says then-City Manager Sylvan Fulwiler. “He did such a good job we kept him around.”

Pupo never meant to stay in Spokane. “Then I got married and children came along. It’s a great place.”

He married a self-described “Air Force brat” 17 years ago. Kathy Pupo says she fell in love with him because he was “stable and fun,” adding with a laugh they both are “neurotically clean.”

The couple has three daughters - all avid athletes like their dad, who often coaches them in soccer and softball.

In his rare spare time, he golfs with friends or skis with his family. He runs four to five miles most mornings. Nearly every Sunday, the family gathers at his mom’s house for a big spaghetti dinner. “My daughters say, ‘Can’t we just have hamburgers or chicken?”’

Some people say Pupo’s Spokane roots and longtime city experience are a blessing. Others say the council should have cast a wider net to land a new city manager.

Former City Councilman Jack Hebner, Pupo’s occasional golfing buddy, thinks his friend deserved the job. But he should have gotten it only after a national search proved he was the best person, Hebner says.

“Bill never had the opportunity to rise above the pool to show that he won the job,” Hebner says. “It doesn’t allow him to assume the position with all of the credibility and confidence a search would have allowed him.”

Police Chief Terry Mangan disagrees. “I don’t think if Spokane had done a worldwide search it would have come up with anyone better or more qualified,” he says.

Others worry that Pupo’s too close to Spokane’s top dogs to tap into the needs of the average citizen.

Pupo scoffs at critics, saying he’s tired of people labeling others. “You work in a business, you’re labeled as part of the business community. Everybody lives in a neighborhood,” he says. “We want to be breaking down barriers, not building them.”

Besides, Pupo adds, “I’m as fresh as anybody. It’s my responsibility to challenge the activities that we do here.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: MANAGER FACTS Bill Pupo is Spokane’s fifth city manager since 1960. He earns $95,713 a year and oversees the city’s day-to-day operations, from balancing the budget to fixing potholes.