Lakewood City Council Candidate Forum with Tillicum Woodbrook Association

On Thursday September 5th, the members of the Tillicum Woodbrook Neighborhood Association held a candidates forum for the two candidates running for Lakewood City council Position #5. I would like to first thank those residents of Tillicum who took an evening to attend and who asked some thought provoking questions.  Thanks to David Anderson, president of the association for arranging the forum to give John Simpson and myself the opportunity to talk about our issues and the vision we see for a better Lakewood.  Finally, thank you City Council members, Marie Barth and Mike Brandstetter for being in attendance during the forum.

We had the opportunity to talk about several key issues during our forum which affects all of us and certainly the Tillicum/Woodbrook area.  While there were several areas of agreement between John and me, there are also some very distinct differences.  I believe in complete transparency in City government and to me that does not mean just makings facts available for those who have the time to study the facts.  It means that we in City government need to make sure citizens understand the facts and what we believe the long term implications are. 

Second, I am unwilling to categorically say I would never vote to raise taxes.  I will state that we, all of us, need to understand the costs of City government, determine what services we want, how we control those costs and if hard choices have to be made what do we, as citizens really want.  Sometimes the choices are to raise taxes, reduce services, reduce City staff or eliminate pay increases.  When we are confronted with those options, which option do we choose?   These decisions require study and input from all of us.

I believe that we need to work together for our City.  The City Council needs to know what kind of City we as citizens want to leave to our children.  The Council needs to understand what kind of development its citizens want and how to reduce barriers for development and growth of the existing businesses.   We may not need a formal survey to gather our citizens’ goals but we do need input and we need to listen and understand. 

I grew up in this area.  My uncle owned a business in Tillicum and I spent time there.  I know the Lakewood area and I have the business experience to work with a diverse groups of people to identify and solve problems and if necessary do the things to make an organization work more efficiently for the wellbeing of everyone.

I learned a lot listening to the folks who attended the forum.   I look forward to working with them and with all the citizens of Lakewood to say this is where we want to go, these are the barriers and this is how we will overcome those barriers to achieve our goal of a better City for us and even better for our children.