Tri-City grocer throws his name in race for city council. He’s the 1st to announce
A longtime grocer and small business owner is running for Pasco City Council in hopes his firm voice can help steer the city’s governing body.
Charles Grimm is the owner of the Grocery Outlet off Road 68, where he employs about 20 people. His announcement marks the start of the Tri-Cities election season.
Grimm spoke about his candidacy at an event he held with family and supporters outside Pasco City Hall earlier this month. He characterized the city council as “derelict” and in “dysfunction,” citing a recent decision to walk back a plan to lift the city’s ban on retail cannabis.
“I was just really kind of shocked. There was no clear vision, no real leadership and absolutely no decisiveness — it’s what we really need to move forward on something like that,” he said.
Four seats on the Pasco City Council are up for reelection this year. Those seats are currently held by Zahra Roach, Joseph Campos, Irving Brown Sr., and David Milne.
Grimm has not chosen which seat he plans to run for. He lives in District 2, which is represented by Campos, but he might run for Roach’s at-large seat.
Candidates running for local seats will start filing with Washington Secretary of State’s Office on May 15.
Dozens of seats on local school boards, port commissions, city councils, fire district boards and hospital boards will be subject to reelection this fall.
Pasco growth
A Franklin County resident of 17 years, Grimm is running on a platform centered around west Pasco — he wants to find solutions to better address traffic, a lack of housing, as well as economic growth in the area. He’s also running to continue the revitalization efforts underway in downtown Pasco.
When it comes to retail cannabis, Grimm said he’s in favor of the compromise to lift the ban only in industrial zones and require a special use permit.
“My big thing, and the thing of the businesses and law enforcement, was just to keep it out of downtown,” he said.
Growth is also a focal point for Grimm. Pasco is due to see a population boom of 50,000 over the next 20 years.
“I think that we need to think about growth in the sense of supporting it with infrastructure,” he said, citing improvements to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, and roadways and intersection improvements.
The father of five said he supports the Pasco School District’s effort to build a third high school near Road 60 and Burns Road.
Before Grocery Outlet, he owned the Mesa Grocery and Deli. He also served on the Mesa city planning commission for about a decade and is on the Franklin County sheriff’s citizen advisory board.
Republican endorsements
The seat he’s running for is nonpartisan but Grimm is a Republican, having been involved with the Franklin County Republican Party as its state committeeman the past two years.
He’s also quickly accumulated a substantial number of endorsements from local Republicans, including current Pasco Councilman Pete Serrano, Franklin County Commissioners Clint Didier and Rocky Mullen and Sheriff Jim Raymond, among others.
Grimm said he’s also received support from statewide Republicans, including Pasco resident and former U.S. Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley and Washington Republican Party Chair Caleb Heimlich.
His candidacy was sparked by statewide COVID lock downs in 2020 and 2021. He spoke out publicly against the restrictions placed on small businesses, saying Washington state was playing “a game of whack-a-mole.”
“These multi-national, billion-dollar companies could continue business as usual, but our generational, small businesses were told they could not sell goods... We allowed that wealth, those profits, to actually leave the community rather than staying right here. I looked at that, and said that’s not right,” he told the Tri-City Herald.
