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? Yes No
4. How long have you resided in this district/city?
5. How long have you resided in King County?
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32 YEARS |
6. Is the office sought partisan or nonpartisan? Partisan Nonpartisan
CAMPAIGN CONTACTS
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Campaign Name: |
FRIENDS TO RE-ELECT NANCY WHITTEN |
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Address: |
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Campaign Phone: |
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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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PSRC GROWTH MANAGEMENT POLICY BOARD (ALTERNATE REPRESENTATIVE FOR SUBURBAN CITIES
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KING COUNTY GMPC (ALTERNATE REPRESENTATIVE FOR SUBURBAN CITIES
REPRESENTATIVE OF CITY OF SAMMAMISH TO SUBURBAN CITIES ASSN.
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APPOINTED
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2004-2007
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2. If you ran for public office but were not elected, please list those races below:
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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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We have accomplished a lot in the last four years since I became a city councilmember. The East Lake Sammamish Trail has opened. We have adopted new traffic concurrency and road mitigation fee plans accompanied by an 18 year capital road improvement plan with realistic funding. We have refocused significant funding from just roads to include pathways and many bicycle lanes with miles of projects just completed or in process. We have built many multiuse sports fields, creatively partnering with our schools to make them affordable and filling an important need in our community. We have developed a model citizens' participation process for our parks design. We have looked to environmental concerns, and redone our CAO ordinance. Yet, there is much more to accomplish, and I would like to be a part of that. We need to proceed with the design and development of our new town center. We need to meet the constant challenge of growth and its impacts. We need to face head on the lack of affordable housing in our community, and do something about it. We need to look to the preservation of our important environmental resources, and are considering a new LID ordinance, the revision of our shoreline management ordinance, changes to our stormwater manual and are undergoing basin planning for each of our drainage basins, an update on our Beaver Lake management plan, and a new Pine Lake Water Quality Study with the development of a management plan underway. We need to plan and open our waterfront park and Evans Creek Preserve and continue our aggressive land acquisition for open space and trails. There's lots more. I hope to be a part in making all of it happen. |
2. Describe your most important personal characteristics or traits as they relate to the office you seek.
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This response is necessarily subjective. There is a combination of things which make me who I am and provide value to our council. I will touch on some of them. Professionally, my legal skills and experience add a dimension and occasionally provide an insight to our very talented council, which has one rocket scientist, two MBA's, a CPA-financial planner, a former school principal- administrator, a corporate executive - finance person, and me, the lawyer. There are my strong concerns for the environment, and our quality of life issues arising out of the need to accommodate growth and its impacts. Also, my passion for fair process and the need to create a dialogue with our citizens. There is also my concern for the lack of affordable housing in our community and the challenge of addressing it head on, which we are doing in the design of our new Town Center. |
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.
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One accomplishment which has occurred while I have been in office starting in 2004 has been the opening of the East Lake Sammamish Trail. Prior to the last election when three new Sammamish City councilmembers including myself came on board, this County trail project was facing significant local opposition both from both certain citizens who lived along the lake and the trail and our former city council. Step by step over a two year plus time frame our new city council worked with the county and our citizens to overcome one challenge after another and get the trail opened. Solutions were found and the trail was opened last year. I was a member of the new City council and feel I was an instrumental member in helping to get the trail opened. My legal skills and experience gave me a perspective and an insight that assisted me and our council in addressing this challenge.
A second accomplishment was the adoption of a model citizens' participation process for our Parks Master Planning while I was chair of our Council Parks Committee and played a leadership role in the development of this process. In our election year of 2003, the issue of short-changing of citizen participation in the design of a local park became a major issue for our city, with neighbors being sharply divided. After the election we started from scratch on the design of this park facility, and when we did we developed a new, innovative process to assure significant citizen participation. Divided elements of our community came out of the process feeling that while no one got everything he or she had desired, all groups had been "heard" and the new park design was a good compromise. This park has just opened, and appears to be very well enjoyed. My leadership skills as chair of this committee were very instrumental in the development of this process, which is the prototype for all new park masterplanning projects, and were a key factor in the healing of a divided community that started out with the perception that no one was listening. |
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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As an attorney, I have a background from my early years in practice in business law and litigation, employment law, bankruptcy,contracts and related areas. More currently my legal practice has emphasized real estate and estate planning and administration. My professional knowledge and experience provide a valuable perspective for me in my role as a councilmember.
More recently I have served on the City Council of Sammamish since I was elected in 2003, and for two years as chair of our Council's Park Committee, and a member of our City Council's Finance Committee and Public Works Committee. I also have served on regional committees and groups, serving as our City's representative to Suburban City Association for the last four years, a Suburban City Association alternate to the King County Growth Management Planning Committee for two years, and a Suburban City Association alternate to the PSRC Growth Management Policy Board, and our city's alternate to WRIA 8.
I have been a neighborhood activist with others in our community in the 1980's and 1990's appealing, often successfully, as a member of these groups on a pro-bono basis land use projects where the community perceived there were unaddressed enviromental concerns and impacts from growth on schools, roads, the safety of children walking to school, and similar areas. This service helped me gain skills in working with citizen groups, and learning to respect the input of others.
When my children, all four of them, were younger, I was a volunteer for years in the schools. That was just fun, but also helped fulfill a need and gave me a great respect for the importance of our teaching community in our larger community. I have a broad volunteer background going back to when I was a teenager and worked in our local hospitals, then tutoring as a volunteer in college and law school, followed by volunteering with numreous community groups ever since.
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council member's role is varied, but the primary job is to be a "policy maker". This means that one has to be part of a team and respectfuly "listen" to and work with other councilmembers as well as staff and the people all of us serve. So listening and learning is a key part of the job. Part of the job is learning what one can't do, and that includes inserting oneself into the day to day tasks of running the city. That task belongs to our city manager, and respecting that is a very crtical part of being a councilperson. Other duties include taking the time to do what one needs to be well informed on the important issues before the council. At times this means reading reams of paper, or spending hours listening to people (even if it may be less than interesting when said more than once). Also significant is the need to help represent one's city at the regional level, e.g., by serving on regional committees, as well as on City Council committees if those opportunites exist. Another very important role is to serve as an informal ombudsman and ambassador to the residents a councilperson represents. This may mean responding to emails, meeting with citizens, or even just carrying on a dialogue with citizens, but something more than just sitting at the council table and listening to the three minute speech a member of the public can give in public comment portion of a council meeting. From the big picture perspective it can be summed up by saying the job is to serve the people and act in what one believes to be their best interest, even if it is counter to one's own interests or passions. One needs to open up her mind and grow with the job. |
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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JD cum laude in Law, Northwestern University Law School. BA in Spanish, Lake Forest College. Continuing Legal Education Courses in real estate, land use, estate planning. |
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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Finished!
If at all possible, send your response to the Municipal League electronically as an attachment, or insert it into an e-mail message (cec@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: Jason Thibedeau
Seattle, WA 98104-1614 Fax: (425) 671-0506 Website: www.munileague.org