Edmonds Forum

My opponent, DJ Wilson, wrote a gracious statement that he has conceded. I want to thank DJ Wilson for his years of service to Edmonds. My campaign committee, friends, family, supporters and, most of all, the Edmonds citizens who voted for me, have won. I hope those who did not vote for me will evenutally decide that they won too. Thanks for your faith in me. Yay Edmonds!

I want to congratulate new Council Member, Frank Yamamoto, retained Council Members, Diane Buckshnis and Lora Petso, and our new mayor, Dave Earling. I look forward to working with all of you to serve the citizens of Edmonds. That’s what it’s all about.

“Tonight’s the night.”
-Neil Young

Last night, I heard that my opponent has spent $35,000 on this election. Couple that with his (I’m told) at least 1500 campaign signs. DJ had several mass mailings, while I had one. DJ’s campaign literature was professionally done. Aside from my mailing, my literature (a brochure) was printed on our personal monochrome laser printer. I’m also sure that DJ put in many more hours doorbelling. In running for office, DJ’s a pro, I’m an amateur.

For comparison, I spent about $4500 of the $4995 (cash and in-kind), that I raised ($5 short of my self-imposed limit), and I have about 50 campaign signs. So I spent 1/8th of DJ’s total, and had 1/30th of the signs.

If money spent, incumbency, name recognition, and doorbelling are the only means to win even a small-town (40,000 people) election, I’m going to get somewhere between 1/8th and 1/30th of DJ’s total votes.

On the other hand, I have an edge in local endorsements from individuals, groups, and the major local newspaper (Everett Herald), I seemed to get a better response (though there’s no objective measure) from political forum events, and have been informed of strong under-the-radar support from many networks. I have also been told that my many opinions posted on EdmondsForum.com have been convincing.

Last, I need to mention that DJ was censured by his fellow Council members in last week’s City Council meeting. I’ve written elsewhere that I do not agree with how that happened, and I wish the election was not tainted with the censuring. When doorbelling after the censuring, not a single person mentioned it (and neither did I).

When I declared my candidacy last June, it never occurred to me that I had a chance to win — given my opponents edge in every conventional campaign area. My purpose in running was to bring out issues to voters — issues that I had hoped DJ would embrace during our discussions over the last four years. He did not, to my satisfaction, so I declared my candidacy. As the campaign went on, and people began to support me with encouragement, ideas, and financial contributions, I began to think of my campaign as an experiment in winning votes without spending a lot of money. I think I’ve managed that, and we’ll see to what degree I have.

I want to thank everyone for their support and encouragement, which kept me going throughout this campaign. Tonight’s the night.

The Everett Herald, Snohomish County’s largest newspaper, has endorsed my candidacy.

Former Edmonds Mayor, Harve Harrison, has also endorsed my candidacy.

The following were my remarks at last night’s League of Women Voters Forum:

You can read about me in my brochure. I’m going to talk about Edmonds.

Although it’s important to discuss what we want for our city 10-15 years from now, huge projects, such as an urban village on the Port property, won’t be happening soon, because the current economic climate does not support large, expensive projects. Right now, Edmonds would be better served by a focus on filling our empty store fronts and offices, such as those in Perrinville and the former Old Milltown.

So, how do we fill these empty commercial buildings? We start by looking at what’s been working.

A few examples of successful projects that have enhanced Edmonds are the Summer Market, the Third Thursday Art Walk, the Murals, and the Pentaque courts. Michael Burdett’s Edmonds Sports Academy brought families into Edmonds all summer to participate in competitions at the ECA gym. These projects are from the ground up ideas — community experiments that have been successful. I call these “agile designed projects.”

Agile design is from the ground up. An individual or small group tries an idea. If it works, you do more of it. If the project falls flat, no big deal, because you didn’t spend a lot of money or create something so expensive that you can’t easily move on. Some will take, some won’t. Let the community decide. Even agile projects that don’t immediately use an empty building, such as the summer market, could develop into ones that do. No doubt, successful businesses bring more businesses.

The role of the City should be to support these experiments in agile business projects — to make it easy for people to start their projects in our city. We can preserve what works for us, while using our imagination to create new economic opportunities. I know that there are many creative ideas out there. Edmonds can build on the success of these agile projects by creating an identity as the place to come for community-created businesses. An earned identity is the best brand of all.

Thank you for being here.
For more on agile design.

My opponent, D.J. Wilson, is attempting to embarrass me by posting, on his web site, my endorsement of him for City Council, four years ago. This doesn’t embarrass me: after four years of having him in office, I changed my mind sufficiently enough to choose to run against him. Show me a voter who’s never changed his or her mind about any political office holder and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t learn from experience.

In the current election, I’m endorsing, and will be voting for, me. You may post that, DJ.

The Edmonds Chamber of Commerce sponsored a candidates forum on this last October 3. Watch the whole video and read my opening and closing statements:

Opening Statement

I’m Joan Bloom and I’m deeply involved in Edmonds: I‘ve lived here for 26 years. My husband and I raised our son and our daughter here. I run a care consulting business from my office that’s a block from the Downtown post office.

I’ve always been engrossed in the civic life of Edmonds, doing all the things that families do, and in the last seven years, I’ve been involved in the issues that come before city government. I have participated in council meetings, boards, ad hoc groups, committees, and community discussions.

Even in this difficult economy, I believe that Edmonds can prosper, but only if we work together to develop a plan that will value, preserve, and enhance both the esthetic AND commercial advantages of Edmonds. The beauty of Edmonds is obvious, and we should do nothing to compromise the attributes of the bowl, including downtown businesses and the waterfront. We also have the neighborhoods — Firdale, Westgate, Perrinville, Five Corners — and a commercial corridor, HWY 99 that links us to other towns.

Each area requires a different model of development that supports its nature. Highway 99, for instance, could support vibrant commercial activity, higher-density residential, and job opportunities. The neighborhoods, on the other hand, would need support services unique to residential needs. Finally the bowl area should provide the cultural core for vibrant, high quality community life so natural for Edmonds.

I think we can preserve what works for us, while using our imagination to create new economic opportunities.

Closing Statement

I am running a grass-roots campaign, as I have pledged to keep my campaign donations and expenses below $5000. To that end, we print campaign brochures on our own printer, and we’ve re-purposed a small number of used campaign signs, by painting over them.

I have no agenda other than the economic health and well being of Edmonds. I have chosen to run for office because I think I can add a broad community point of view. As a candidate, I am independent of any organization or group. If I’m elected, the only campaign promise I will need to keep is to look after the health of the city.

I believe that council members should be stewards, not politicians. I hope to be elected so that I can serve as a steward of the public funds, the environment, our historical assets, and our infrastructure.

When we moved to our new home in spring of 1989, we didn’t know that a portion of our property had been a wetland. We did know that our home had to be located on the west setback of our property line to avoid having to put it on pilings. There was a lovely piece of property behind my neighbors, which, in winter, became a pond that housed as many as twelve ducks. The first two winters, there was a small pond on the corner of our property where some of those ducks would come to frolic.

In spring of 2002, I saw a man in the middle of the neighbors’ winter duck pond. He was from Wetland Resources, and was kind enough to explain to me the criteria for wetland determination: hydrology, soil, and vegetation. The area he surveyed met all of the criteria, and was approximately 10,000 square feet, well over the 2500 square feet that was regulated by the Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) at that time.

The owner of the property, which was the size of three lots, sold all three lots in 2003, for the going price of one buildable lot. One would logically assume that only one house could be built on the property. However, on July 15, 2005, an employee of the new property owner came down the (steep) hill, also regulated by the CAO, in a backhoe to take a “soil sample,” damaging a significant amount of wetland vegetation in the process. The neighbors adjacent to the property called the City of Edmonds (COE) and learned that the property had been reassessed, that the wetland area had (miraculously?) shrunk to under 2500 square feet, that is, too small to be regulated.

Although my property does not border on the contested property, I spearheaded the effort to save this wetland on behalf of the neighborhood and the wildlife. During this time, at the public comment session, I made several appeals to City Council (several of which are replicated on my website, EdmondsForum.com, category: Wetlands). In my first presentation, Make Developers ask Permission, Not Forgiveness, I asked the planning department to require the necessary assessments by the State Department of Ecology (DOE) and the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps). The Corps visited the site and determined that it was an isolated wetland, thus not subject to their jurisdiction. Later, the Corps reversed their earlier determination, based on inaccurate information received from the property owner saying there is a (non-existent) drain in the middle of the wetland.

To this day, the DOE has not been allowed on the property to complete an assessment of the wetland. The wetland has been partially filled, with Corps permit, cleared, and graded, without permit, by the property owner. In this process, the wetland has been invaded by numerous noxious weeds, including Japanese Knotweed, which is spreading rampantly.

This is a tale of lack of enforcement of the CAO on the part of the City of Edmonds. In the process described above, we learned that the City of Edmonds delayed publishing the CAO by 79 days, allowing the property owner to vest under the old CAO. (See my comments to council, Restore this Wetland, and Presentation to City Council on Delay Publishing the CAO, on EdmondsForum.com.)

In addition to my private-citizen efforts above, I have contributed to the stewardship of Edmonds in a variety of ways: I served a two-year term on the Edmonds’ Transportation Committee, and was able to put in the Transportation Comprehensive Plan the goal of providing a shuttle to transport people from the neighborhoods to the bowl. I reviewed the city’s Sustainability Element of the Comprehensive plan, and all of my suggestions were integrated into the element, except “restoration of critical areas.” I am currently a member of the newly formed Tree Board. I also have received certification for my yard as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat. My yard integrates edibles, ornamentals, and native plants, and I garden, organically.

I do not presume to have the knowledge of the areas referenced in your questionnaire that would enable me to provide informed answers to many of them. It would be naive, when compared to the Sierra Club’s broad experience and involvement with the issues, to pretend to have that knowledge. Because I am dedicated to the stewardship of our habitat, I will seek consultation from the Sierra Club regarding environmental issues that come before the Edmonds City Council.

Thank you for endorsing my candidacy for Edmonds City Council, position # 5.

Promoting myself to win political office is outside my experience. Asking for contributions. Asking for help with my campaign. Getting help with my campaign and integrating others’ ideas into how best to approach the voters. I find myself focusing on campaign strategy, when I’d rather focus on why I’m running for office.

I’m running for office because I have observed poor stewardship of our tax-payer dollars. I’m running for office because I have observed an adversarial relationship between Council Members, between the Mayor’s Office and Council Members, between citizens and elected officials, between staff and citizens, between staff and Council Members, and (most unfortunately) between citizen and citizen. I am running for office because I have observed that some elected officials think in terms of their own short-term political gain, rather than the long-term stewardship of Edmonds resources and its future economic health.

I am running for office because the finger-pointing and blame game is getting us nowhere. We have well-informed citizens in Edmonds. We have numerous citizens who volunteer their time on the many citizen committees and organizations for the benefit of Edmonds. We have many citizens who dedicate precious time researching issues of importance for our city. All of these voices should be considered when decisions are made about Edmonds. All input must be encouraged, respected, and valued.

I am running for office because I believe that Council Members should be politicians second, and stewards, first. By politicians, I mean, those who, rather than governing, always seem to be campaigning for the next election. By stewards, I mean those who work for the betterment of our city, not just for today, but for future generations.

Stewardship starts with striping concealment from all government activities. If everything is done in the best interests of tax-paying citizens, then there is no reason that we can’t monitor governance as if there were a ticker tape. We have everything to gain, and nothing to lose, from an open government process.

Stewardship continues with efficiency in the use of tax-payers’ money. Yes, if you want a service it must be paid for, but let’s make sure we’re getting our money’s worth. There should be clear, accessible budget reports that can be easily understood by anyone who has interest in reviewing them. Citizens will be better equipped to make decisions about taxing themselves, and about how those tax dollars are spent.

Stewardship includes transparency in all operations of the city. We should be able to access the record of all actions taken on behalf of the citizens of Edmonds, by all of the departments of the city. While the mayor is responsible for oversight of staff, every citizen should have easy access to city operations. Cooperation and collaboration will be fostered when we can all see the inner workings of our government.

Stewardship recognizes that the quality of life in Edmonds is best when all generations can afford to live here — when young families, young adults, and older adults all have available housing appropriate to their current situation. We have many neighborhoods, and they don’t have to look exactly the same.

Stewardship means that Edmonds needs a balance of housing, parks, businesses, and entertainment. To accomplish that we need to guide our City departments to suppress poor development and foster superior development.

(with Gary Bloom)

In Franz Kafka’s The Castle, the protagonist (known as “K”) is summoned by authorities (a mysterious bureaucracy) to work as a land surveyor, but on his arrival, finds that he has not been hired. K spends most of the novel attempting to communicate with his contact in the bureaucracy and unsuccessfully trying to find his way into the bureaucracy’s office (the Castle). In The Castle, no one is evil; K is even accommodated to a degree by being given a different job. The bureaucratic opacity is just a fact of life, accepted — and defended — by the townspeople.

My take-away from the novel is that the growth of bureaucracy and opacity in government doesn’t need to stem from a big, evil plot, and doesn’t need to present itself in a big (or small) evil manner. It usually just evolves, incrementally, while we are busy working at our jobs and raising our children — and by we I mean government employees as well as citizens.

A large element of bureaucracy stems from our natural tribalism, where we (i.e., humans) identify ourselves as belonging to groups: Red Sox and Yankees’s fans; Northern Californians and Southern Californians; British and Germans; Hindus and Buddhists; or, in our case, city employees and citizens. We don’t need to work at this us/them separation, it just happens.

To keep that natural separation at bay, (and subsequent bureaucracy and opacity) requires not just resistance, but conscious effort. Rather than try to stop opacity, it is better to create practices of transparency. How to do that? Currently, the City has private records — human-resource related, and some legal issues. Most everything else are public records, which are available by request. The problem of records available by request is that you need to know what you’re looking for to get at them — they’re public, but camouflaged. Where’s Waldo is a fun game for little kids, but a lousy design for public records.

Here’s how you do transparency for public records: make the City’s file cabinet a website — not just any website, but a wiki website, which is designed for easy search. What’s a wiki? I bet you use this one often. The software used by Wikipedia.org is free, easy to install, and even has tools to make it easier to use or migrate to, such as a Microsoft Word Doc-to-MediaWiki exporter.

In any case, the above is not meant to be a blueprint, but a guideline. The important element is not just talking about transparency, but creating tools to make it the default. So, how will we know when our City’s information is sufficiently transparent? Easy: when City staff are using the same source to get their information as the citizens of Edmonds.

Why is this important? The focus on transparency has been primarily on issues of the City budget, and for good reason. But transparency goes beyond finances. In a totalitarian government, the government monitors the people. There’s a book about that. In a democracy, citizens monitor the government — and to do so, is good practice for citizenship, even when it’s local government. Why shouldn’t Edmonds be a model to emulate?

For more on transparency in government: Open Government Initiative.

What are the duties of the City Council (Council), and what are the duties of the Mayor?

The Council’s job is to provide direction by considering, debating, and passing ordinances and the comprehensive plan and its elements, for the city. The Mayor’s job is to manage our City’s staff for quality and efficiency of services.

Is it ever appropriate for the Council to oversee the Mayor’s responsibilities?

If the Mayor asks the Council for a tax levy, then the Council should question whether our citizens’ tax money is being spent most efficiently. By asking for an increase in taxes, the Mayor is stating that we do not have sufficient revenue to provide quality services to the citizens of Edmonds. He is also stating that expenses — the spending of the citizens of Edmonds’ money — are being handled as efficiently as possible. Before the Council asks the citizens of Edmonds to give the Mayor more money to spend on staff and contractors, the Mayor should have to give sufficient evidence that he or she is not spending more than necessary.

Do you, as a candidate for City Council, believe that the Mayor is not spending citizens’ money as efficiently as possible?

The current Mayor inherited a difficult situation. The economic downturn has resulted in less of Edmonds citizens’ money — primarily in the form of sales and property taxes — being collected by the City Government. There is less revenue to pay staff and contractors for services. At the same time, not enough has been done to reign in expenses in response to the economic downturn. In hard times, it’s not too much to ask those who are not just getting by to sacrifice a bit. At this time, should we be asking for more citizens’ money to spend on raises for current City staff?

The Mayor, the candidate for Mayor, and some current Council members have been defending City employees. They’re saying that City staff is doing a great job. You disagree?

Completely irrelevant. No one’s attacking the quality and work of City staff. I have concerns and questions about the efficiency of how City staff and contractors are being used. With far less development going on in Edmonds, why have staffing levels in Development Services (responsible for planning, code enforcement, and building), for example, remained unchanged? Why is staff time being used to process the ESC associates contract rezone application that asks for heights on an earthquake liquefaction zone which, by our own code, cannot be built?

Again, the quality and efficiency of staff is the Mayor’s responsibilty. But when the Mayor asks for more money from Edmonds citizens’, that is, asks the Council to create a tax levy, then it’s the Council’s responsibility to question that need.