Reflections on the City Council Candidate Forum
Posted by the Kenmore Crow | Filed under Politics | 2 Comments
Thursday night I attended the first candidate “forum” (similar to a debate) at the Aqua Club in Uplake (which did not appear to be a very neutral location) for the two contested Kenmore City Council positions. Approximately 50 people were in attendance, which looked to me like roughly half to two-thirds the capacity of the venue.
The structure of the evening was mostly centered around pre-submitted questions, grouped into categories by the moderator, with each candidate being allowed a fixed amount of time (usually 2-3 minutes) to give their thoughts on each issue.
The categories covered at the forum were:
- city budget, taxes, and spending
- traffic, 522, transit, walkable neighborhoods
- environment, air and water pollution
- parks and recreation, St. Edwards, ballfields
- Kenmore Village downtown project, Urban Partners
Here’s my general impression of the message each of the four candidates was presenting Thursday night. The commentary below represents my opinion alone, and should not be construed as an endorsement of any particular candidate.
[left to right: Diane Brennan, Laurie Sperry, Patrick O'Brien, and Allan Van Ness]
Diane Brennan
What Diane lacks in eloquence she definitely makes up for in passion. You could tell that Diane feels very strongly about the environment in Kenmore, as well as the importance of an open and transparent local government. Diane’s main themes seemed to be that the city should do more for the environment, spend (and save) its money more wisely, and do more to attract businesses to Kenmore.
Laurie Sperry
As one would expect from an incumbent, Laurie spent most of her time touting the accomplishments that the city has had during the last four years while she has been in office. She mentioned the addition of numerous parks, the improvement of 522, and at least twice brought up the fact that Kenmore was named one of the “best towns and cities across the country for families” by Family Circle Magazine. Personally, I have a hard time making the connection between “Kenmore made some arbitrary list in a fluff magazine” and “re-elect Laurie Sperry,” but it’s obviously a big deal to some people, I guess.
Patrick O’Brien
Patrick came out swinging on his number one issue, which clearly appears to be financial responsibility in the city budget. At one point he claimed that his “number one priority” would be clearing up the traffic bottleneck at 68th and 522, but most of the points he hit on throughout the evening were city finance related. He brought up the fact that “several” city salaries are in excess of $100,000, consulting fees are in the millions, and the city has not reported the cost of various lawsuits. One specific money-saving action that O’Brien proposed was to re-bid Kenmore Village.
Allan Van Ness
Allan seemed to be somewhat on the defensive most of the night, spending most of his allotted time responding to accusations from Patrick O’Brien. Several times he corrected what he said were false statements by O’Brien on various issues such as taxes and spending. I was a little bit disappointed with what seemed to me to be a pattern of blame-shifting from Allan in some of his responses. On a question about opening up 522 to more lanes, his response was that “the state wouldn’t do it.” Referring to the idea of re-bidding Kenmore Village, his response was “nothing’s happening in the market.” His statements were true, but not very proactive, in my opinion.
Cross-Questioning
The portion of the evening that stuck out to me the most was the brief cross-questioning section, in which each candidate was permitted to directly pose a question to their opponent.
Diane’s question for Laurie was about the city’s dumping laws. She wanted to know why the current city code allows potentially toxic trash to accumulate on a property as long as it is not visible from the city street. Laurie’s response was “I have no idea,” and to outline the complaint-driven process for dumping law enforcement.
Laurie’s question for Diane was “can you name three positive changes you’ve seen in the city of Kenmore in the last four years?” It came across to me as sarcastic and childish. The line even drew laughs from some in the audience, who I assume were Sperry supporters. She was obviously attempting to prove some sort of point: that she apparently believes Diane’s campaign is too negative. Of course, if someone thinks everything in the city is going great, why would they run against an incumbent councilmember in the first place? For the record, Diane named four things: an improved tree ordinance, the opening of Snapdoodle Toys, new sidewalks on 522, and the new Swamp Creek Park.
Patrick’s question for Allan was “what are you prepared to do to reduce spending and budgetary increases?” Allan said that he would push for a reassessment and evaluation of the city’s consulting contracts, possibly creating some new city positions to do jobs that are currently contracted out. He also gave a generic response about “tightening our belts.”
For Allan’s question to Patrick, he took the same disappointing route as Laurie, asking Patrick to name “three other things that you think have been done well in the City of Kenmore in the last four years.” Rather than play along like Diane did, Patrick took the opportunity to instead point out the problems that he sees with non-public processes. Clearly he is not concerned about the possibility of being perceived as too negative.
Closing Thoughts
Overall I thought the forum was interesting, and gave me a much better idea of what the candidates are about than what I’ve been able to read in their statements and responses to our questionnaire. If there are more such forums between now and the election I will attempt to attend and report on these as well.
Tags: 522, Allan Van Ness, city council, Diane Brennan, Laurie Sperry, Patrick O'Brien, Politics
Council Candidate Forum Tonight
Posted by the Kenmore Crow | Filed under Politics | No Comments Yet!
Heads up, according to Laurie Sperry’s Kenmore Blog, there’s a Kenmore City Council Candidates Forum from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM tonight at the Aqua Club: 18512 58th Ave NE
Google Street View:
View Larger Map
Also of interest in the local election: Kenmore City Council/Van Ness, O’Brien spar over Kenmore Council seat
Kenmore’s new city hall was another target O’Brien mentioned early in his conversation. He said the issue should have been put to a public vote, and that at one point Van Ness promised it would go on the ballot.
“It (a new city hall) certainly isn’t the priority of the majority of the people I talk to,” O’Brien said.
Van Ness countered that he did not initially support the city hall project, calling for, as it did, a building five times the size of Kenmore’s current City Hall. He also railed against a $2 million underground parking garage, but said he was unable to convince the rest of council to abandon those plans.
In the end, Van Ness said he began to change his mind after the city hall project was essentially rebid.
Patrick O’Brien remains the only council candidate that has not responded to our questions. Here are Allan Van Ness’ responses.
Tags: Aqua Club, city council, city hall, Politics
Legal Action Brought Against Waterfront Construction
Posted by the Kenmore Crow | Filed under Construction | 3 Comments
I received the following bit of news a couple weeks ago from some local citizens that have partnered with Waste Action Project, a Seattle-based “environmental protection organization” to bring legal action against Waterfront Construction, Inc. for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act (pdf of full text) in their activity at the LakePointe Mixed Use Development — a 45 acre site on the shore of Lake Washington at the mouth of the Sammamish River.
The notice alleges that Waterfront Construction “has violated and continues to violate the CWA (see Sections 301, 307, and 402, of the CWA, 33 USC §§ 1311, 1317, and 1342) and its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit.
The list of offenses Waste Action Project are alleging are as follows:
- discharges of bilge water
- discharges of welding waste
- illicit and/or unauthorized discharges
- failure to monitor stormwater discharges
- failure to adopt a stormwater pollution prevention plan
Over on YouTube, user crazyhazedaze has been posting videos of some of these activities since late last year.
Waterfront Construction has 60 days from September 10th to respond to the action before they will face a citizen lawsuit.
Water pollution has been an ongoing issue around the Puget Sound. According to a recent Seattle PostGlobe story, Washington State has plenty of violators of the Clean Water Act:
Even though 195 out of the Evergreen State’s 435 regulated facilities violated the Clean Water Act between 2004 and 2007, few got in trouble for it, according to exhaustive data posted at NYTimes.com. For every 100 violations in the state, there were only 8.6 enforcement actions.
And those are just the ones that were caught.
Clearly there is still plenty of work to do to ensure the cleanliness of our natural resources. We will continue to follow this developing story for you.
Tags: Construction, environment, Lake Washington, LakePointe, legal, waterfront, Waterfront Construction
Stupid Prices Redefines “Nothing” and “Everything”
Posted by the Kenmore Crow | Filed under Business | 2 Comments
Covered first on KBIN, then on Kenmore Blog.net, and most recently over at Kenmore Undressed, Kenmore’s discount store Stupid Prices (more recently known as “Smart Buys at Stupid Prices”) will be closing its doors forever in a little over a month.
I flew over to Stupid Prices yesterday to check out their deals, and spotted something a little bit amusing:
In giant, bold, all-caps: “NOTHING HELD BACK!” and “EVERYTHING ON SALE!”
In tiny fine print, taped to the third banner: “Excluding: TELEVISIONS”
It would seem that Stupid Prices has rather strange definitions of “NOTHING” and “EVERYTHING.” Televisions are apparently “NOTHING,” and therefore naturally excluded from the “EVERYTHING” which is on sale.
Tags: chain business, economy, Stupid-Prices
New Kenmore Fire Department Construction Underway
Posted by the Kenmore Crow | Filed under Construction | No Comments Yet!
Work has begun at the site of the new Kenmore Fire Station on the northwest corner of 73rd Ave and 181st St. The trees have come down and the blackberries have been ripped out.
The Northshore Fire Department has a website with some information on the new project, including renderings and site plans for the new location.
Link via KBIN, photo by the Kenmore Crow.
Tags: central-kenmore, Construction, Northshore-fire, photo
