Woodinville is a great place to live, and we want it to still be that way in ten, twenty, or fifty years.

The City Council has two principal roles in making Woodinville great: passing its laws and allocating its budget. As great as Woodinville is, I think there's room for improvement on both of those fronts.

We have a sound basis for preserving Woodinville's "Country Living, City Style" and Northwest woodland character. These attributes are firmly supported by Woodinville's Comprehensive Plan. But it's easy to eliminate them one tree at a time, one development at a time, one street at a time.

On the other hand, it's well within our grasp to preserve them. Woodinville has codes that allow us to say "no" to developing land that's unsuitable because it's steep, wet, or prone to slope failure. We just need a Council that will support the city staff in saying that difficult word.

And there's development that we do want. We want safe streets and intersections that have enough capacity to keep traffic moving. We want parks, trails, and bicycle corridors. We want to attract good jobs and profitable businesses. And we want the changes in our business and industrial districts to be done in such a way that our existing businesses can share in the prosperity.

We're in a stage that's typical of teenage cities. We've built our tax base; now it's time to change strategy and focus on developing smart instead of developing quickly. It's time to take Woodinville's destiny into our own hands. Woodinville will be a better place if it is planned by the people who live and work here rather than outside interests. The easy choices have been made; now it's time for thoughtful, fact-based, future-oriented decisions.

That's why I'm running for Council. I have the skills and experience to address complex land use, traffic, and economic questions. I have the track record of listening well, building coalitions, working collaboratively, and driving projects through successfully. And I'm ready to give back to this community that is so important to me, as it is to all of us.