Today is the first work day of 2010, but it’s the last work day for Pat Jollota. After 20 years on the Vancouver City Council, Jollota, the council’s resident historian, is retiring. Jack Burkman will be sworn in as her successor at tonight’s meeting. Burkman demonstrated his considerable ability in previous service on the city council. But we’ll miss Jollota.
Vancouver has long had a tradition of strong women serving on its city council. Rose Besserman and Ethel Lehman both served for decades, beginning in the early 1970s when it was rare for women to be elected to office. Jollota carried that tradition forward, and it continues with council members Jeanne Harris and Jeanne Stewart.
Jollota joined the council in 1990, the year Lehman retired. Since then, Vancouver has grown from a city of 46,000 to more than 163,000. When a community grows this fast, there have been a lot of issues. Her positions weren’t always popular. But they were always staked out with the public interest in mind, the way she saw it. Unlike some other politicians who see a city council or school board seat as a ticket to be punched, Jollota never sought higher office.
She wasn’t a Vancouver native, but became one of the community’s leading historians, authoring two local history books. She wasn’t in business, but she had the business sense to see the potential in downtown redevelopment.
Firefighters and police officers know her as a friend. Jollota and her husband were both former Los Angeles Police Department employees, and their son grew up to become a police officer. A room in the Vancouver Police Department’s new West Precinct is named in her honor. “When I moved here in 1982, you could see this town could be something very, very special. It wasn’t then,” she recently told Columbian reporter Andrea Damewood.
The restoration and preservation of Officers Row was her first goal. In addition to her service on the city council and work as a curator for the Clark County Historical Museum, Jollota served other causes. For 20 years she has volunteered and served on the board of the child abuse intervention center, where she helped set up its nonprofit foundation. Other organizations that have benefited from her service include the Arc of Clark County and the animal control advisory board.
On the city council, she was known both for freely speaking her views and for reconciling the divergent opinions of her peers. “She didn’t tolerate fools easily,” said Royce Pollard, whose service as mayor also ends today.
Not every cause she championed ended the way she wished. A 2001 effort to form a local Human Rights Commission was soundly defeated by voters. Opponents wondered why we needed to add to the local bureaucracy when the state Human Rights Commission already exists. In hindsight, Jollota said, she wishes proponents would have touted it as a way to prevent lawsuits.
Her service wasn’t without personal sacrifice. In 2006, Jollota continued on the council as she battled colon cancer, missing several months of meetings. Finally, after 20 years, she realized weekly council meetings were becoming, as a friend described it, as a “dentist appointment every Monday.”
Like Pollard, Jollota says she is not retiring from public life. She’ll continue to be involved in the children’s center, among other causes. So even though she’ll be missing from the dais at city hall, Vancouver and Clark County will continue to benefit from her energy and ideas.
