1. Name as it will appear on the ballot
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First Name |
Middle Initial or Nick Name |
Last Name |
2. Office sought (include office, jurisdiction, position/district number):
3. Are you the incumbent? No
4. How long have you resided in this district/city?
5. How long have you
resided in
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33 years |
6. Is the office sought partisan or nonpartisan? Nonpartisan
CAMPAIGN CONTACTS
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1. Beginning with the most recent position, please list public offices which you have held. Include positions on appointive Boards or Commissions.
Public Office |
Elective or Appointive? |
Dates Held |
Leadership Role (if any) |
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2. If you ran for public office but were not elected, please list those races below:
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Year of Run |
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In this section, we are seeking responses that reflect the four ratings criteria: involvement, effectiveness, character, and knowledge. These are defined as follows:
1. In a page or less, why are you running for this office? (Note: the interview committee will be given a copy of this statement before your interview; at the beginning of your interview you will have the opportunity to expand on this statement in any way you wish.)
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I have a great deal to offer to my community. My life and work experiences are very much rooted in this region. My experiences are substantially diverse, and they have prepared me to serve as a city council member and representative of the voters. Yet my life has not been a crafted dress rehearsal for the commonplace political approach.
Prior to 2001, my local community participation consisted of coaching Little League and rescuing/recovering lost and injured people from the mountains in King County. I found coaching slightly stressful at times (but a valuable study in parental micro-politics) and I found rescue work an extremely rewarding and energizing experience.
Raising three children with my spouse, working full time to support my family, performing rescue work at all hours, and managing a business operations at Microsoft during it’s rapid growth period, precluded my involvement in local government, but at the same time, each of these labors prepared me for future public service.
In 2002, three members of the City Council ventured into my quiet neighborhood and awoke a sleeping giant. The Council members seated themselves on a citizen advisory committee that was over-laden with downtown property developers, and the committee chose the widening of surface arterials to and from downtown as a priority project. I temporarily beat this faction back with their own incorrect concurrency and occupancy forecast numbers, and I called out into daylight their tack of pre-condemning and blighting residential zoned properties. In the course of inspecting the city program and project work, I discovered substantial conflicts and fatal flaws in government processes, and a root cause of stagnation in Bellevue's economic program development. My work was far from done.
Bellevue's current seven-member council is just plain non-diverse, lost in a maze of 30% commercial vacancy rates and stalled speculative developer projects. Council seat campaigns are backed primarily by the real estate, retail, service, and consulting firms that feed from the city's 700 million biennial capital and operating budgets, as well as by individual employees of city contractors and outsource legal firms. The Council has failed to effectively lead and turned its back on the neighborhoods that make Bellevue so great. Offering residents speed bumps and weak traffic mitigation, instead of sustainable effective long-term transportation options, is not effective leadership. City leaders are all talk when it comes to transportation, they have stranded Eastside funding in an overhang of declined high-capacity projects, the money they have spent has all been for freeway access or capacity relief designed for single-occupancy cars.
Bellevue's economic development policies are not sustainable as they rely on a monoculture of service economy businesses, and there is no current avenue, given the cities draconian commercial-industrial zoning, for the city to host or establish a base of manufacturing or innovative light-industry sector employment. It is because of this lack of somatic form of industry, that Bellevue will continue to follow, and not lead, our region in economic progress. Bellevue is lined up to be the mere consumer edge of a congested and possibly declining Eastside.
I run for a seat at the table, for the opportunity to improve the social fabric and serve as steward over our economically diverse development.
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2. Describe your most important personal characteristics or traits as they relate to the office you seek.
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My signature strengths are simple in that, a) I plan, b) I tell the truth, c) and I am accountable. In order to be successful in my campaign and over the course of my life, I continue to focus on these simple tenets, as the subject matter relevant to running any government or enterprise tends to increase in complexity over time.
In Bellevue city government, I see clear evidence of earnest planning on the part of the city manager and staff, yet in the current council I see a false storefront, a pattern of failure to fully study the good work of the staff beyond the veneer, or anything outside the periphery of the two square miles of commerical development objectives. The Council government sets extremely non-specific planning priorities or goals for the City Manager and his staff. I don't suffer fools or their "powerpoint fluff" gladly.
I have personally experinced outright dishonesty & clear conflict of interests on the part of several council members. Two city council members, one my opponent, allowed two longstanding downtown property owners on the downtown citizen advisory council to vote on the extent of their property density and zoning in a sub-area planning meeting.
I want to establish a new open and effective leadership paradigm in Bellevue government, a governing model where elected officials will be 100% accountable for their actions.
I will do this though quiet-effective leadership, and leadership by example. I am not politically for sale or rent. I will not accept campaign funds from vested interests. I will incure less than $3,500 in campaign expenses in this election.
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3. Please describe in sufficient detail, one to three accomplishments or contributions of which you are most proud. These examples should illustrate effective skills and capabilities you think apply to the office you are seeking. These accomplishments may have occurred at any time in your personal, professional, or public life.
4. Please list or describe your current and past activities in the community in which you have acquired skills that relate to the office you seek. Include your role in the activity and the year(s) in which you were involved. Involvement consists of many areas such as family, neighborhood, community, employment, or public life.
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Private Sector roles and repsonsibilities: 1. Security, high-security programs 2. Plant Engineering 3. Facility construction 4. Software development 5. Civil construction 6. Finance and Operations 7. Procurement 8. FCC regulatory compliance 9. Building code compliance 10. Data Center Operations 11. Telecommunications and Networking 12. Wireless infrastructure architecture
Community: 1. Little League coach: 1993-95. 2. Search and Rescue Volunteer: 1985 - 2003 3. Neighborhood proponent-activism: 2001-03 4. Halted the widening of Bellevue Way and 112th SE surface arterials: 2002-03 5. Oversight of Bellevue Downtown Implementation Plan & COB GMA interpretation: 2002 6. Examination of Parks budgets and LVP statement against park bonds - 2002 7. Contributed to wireless telecommunications policy in Bellevue: 2002-03 8. Charter Government petitioner - volunteer: 2002-03 9. Candidate for City Council: 2003
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The most important duty is to be an advocate for people who may have limited time, limited comment opportunity, or full capture of complex issues, and to be accessible, ultimately to understand how city government can impact so as to improve (or degrade) individual lives.
City Council members in Bellevue are considered part-time, and it is possible that over time they can only approach the job in a narrow manner. I approach a council job like no other job I have labored at, and if elected I intend to do more than take up a place in chair and intone for the viewing audience at study sessions, Council meetings, commission meetings and public hearings. I intend to be thorough in asking questions and listening to public citizen/resident and public property owner or business representative input. Council members operate in a quasi-judicial capacity, but they do not have a right to fully sequester themselves from the real challenges their constituents face.
If elected, my duty is to work for the Citizens of Bellevue as their elected representative to obtain the most value for their revenue and fee dollars. I will not act as a politically funded proxy for property owners with substantial economic interests in Bellevue's land use changes. I will maintain Bellevue's conformance with the WA State growth management act, if the GMA continues to be the model for growth and the will of the voters.
I will represent all stakeholders fairly and evenly. I intend to represent people who share my views and values, and I intend to seek to understand even more those people who do not share my values. I do not consider my opinions or beliefs as the most substantial guiding factor in my decision-making process, it is healthier to dispute one's own beliefs, lest they become too entrenched or stale, and I with them. This city council needs stronger leadership, it cannot use one more group-thinker or glad-hander. |
EDUCATION BACKGROUND SUMMARY
The Municipal League’s Candidate Evaluation Report is distributed to voters in print and/or on our website. It includes a summary of the candidate’s education. Please summarize your education in 120 characters (letters, punctuation, and space all combined). The League will delete material that exceeds the space limit by beginning with the last entry. Suggested order is (degree) (subject) (school) (year, if desired).
Note: If this question is left blank the League will not include education information in your candidate profile.
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FOR PUBLICATION IN CANDIDATE EVALUATION REPORT
The Municipal League’s Candidate Evaluation Report also includes a summary of each candidate’s civic involvement. Please summarize your civic involvement in the space below. We will make every attempt to include the information in the Candidate Evaluation Report as submitted. Due to space restrictions in the Report, your response is limited to 500 characters (letters, punctuation, and spaces all combined). It is important that you list your involvement beginning with the most important and ending with the least important. If you exceed the length of response permitted, or if the League should find it necessary to shorten responses for publication purposes, deletions will be made beginning with the last item listed.
Note: This information will appear verbatim on the League’s Candidate Evaluation Report. If this question is left blank, the Municipal League will not include information on your civic involvement in the Report.
Check here if you would like the Municipal League to copy the first 500 characters from Question 4 to paste into this section.
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Private Sector roles and repsonsibilities: 1. Security, high-security programs 2. Plant Engineering 3. Facility construction 4. Software development 5. Civil construction 6. Finance and Operations 7. Procurement 8. FCC regulatory compliance 9. Building code compliance 10. Data Center Operations 11. Telecommunications and Networking 12. Wireless infrastructure architecture
Community: 1. Little League coach: 1993-95. 2. Search and Rescue Volunteer: 1985 - 2003 3. Neighborhood proponent-activism: 2001-03 4. Halted the widening of Bellevue Way and 112th SE surface arterials: 2002-03 5. Oversight of Bellevue Downtown Implementation Plan & COB GMA interpretation: 2002 6. Examination of Parks budgets and LVP statement against park bonds - 2002 7. Contributed to wireless telecommunications policy in Bellevue: 2002-03 8. Charter Government petitioner - volunteer: 2002-03 9. Candidate for City Council: 2003 |
Finished!
If at all possible, send your response to the Municipal League electronically as an attachment, or insert it into an e-mail message (rebecca@munileague.org). Mail and fax numbers are listed below. If the League has not contacted you to schedule an interview, please call the League office at your earliest convenience.
Don’t forget to send the following to the Municipal League: a resume, a photo, campaign literature, and, if you are an incumbent, constituent newsletters and other materials. Please use the check-off list on the cover sheet of this packet to indicate which items you have sent.
Candidate Evaluation Coordinator: Rebecca Cooper
Seattle, WA 98104-1614 Fax: 425-671-0506 Website: www.munileague.org