Your vote is a precious right, so why should you lend it to me?

Local Neighbor and Business Owner in Kirkland
I have a deep and abiding commitment to our community. I am a passionate advocate for small, locally owned, family businesses in our neighborhood business districts where I have owned and operated my own business with my husband for over 25 years.

I believe living and working in a community implies a commitment to stewardship, something I take very seriously. I have been actively involved in issues, events and projects that impact our businesses, neighborhoods and the whole community since Larry and I made the decision to live here.

My Service
My husband, Larry Springer, was elected to the Kirkland City Council 15 years ago and served for 11 years. As a result, my understanding of the city grew and my commitment to make a difference became even stronger.

In 1999, in an effort to build an event that would strengthen the bonds of community among our neighborhoods, our businesses, our city, our organizations, churches and schools, I founded Celebrate Kirkland! the organization that puts on our annual 4th of July Celebration. This event has become a part of the fabric of Kirkland and is the most anticipated celebration of the year.

In 2003 I was asked to help put together the year long Centennial Celebration through 2005. This provided me with an incredible opportunity to connect to Kirkland’s past and recognize the importance it plays in Kirkland’s future. A lesson I will never forget!

After losing a very close race for city council in 2007 I turned up the volume on my community service. I took on the chairmanship of my neighborhood association, and membership in the Kirkland Alliance of Neighborhoods. I took a board position on the Kirkland Downtown Association, I became a member of the Downtown Action Team.

My Leadership Training and Experience
I left a 31 year career at Group Health Cooperative managing groups of up to 175 employees, huge technical and clinical systems and multimillion dollar budgets in 2007. I hope to bring my corporate experience in management, decision making and fiscal accountability to Kirkland.

I received extensive Leadership training through programs at Group Health, from Antioch University and the University of Washington School of Business. I was a member of the inaugural class of Leadership Eastside and continue active participation in alumni training opportunities and in support of the organization.

Founding and leading Celebrate Kirkland, Inc and the annual 4th of July Celebration for 10 years has given me enormous experience in managing people and projects in the community setting. It also requires months of intense negotiation and collaboration with the city as a customer of its services. Seeing the city’s operations from this point of view has been invaluable.

Neighborhood Association leadership has given me an intimate appreciation of the complexity of the relationships and responsibilities necessary to have strong connected places to live. Communication among those groups is a paramount requirement for a sense of cohesion and membership.

Some thoughts on the issues – circa 2009
Community Solidarity
I firmly believe that it is a time for solidarity. I am so very tired of the neighborhood versus business bickering that goes on in this city. We have to improve the relationship between neighborhood interests and business interests. That’s going to continue to be a major theme for me. We are dependent on one another. Businesses like mine depend on the community in which we live and work. And we hope that we’re providing services and goods that people want and need. As a whole community I believe we can find the critical mass and combination of businesses and services that we need to support each other. There is a symbiosis that can be healthy for all of us but we must commit ourselves to work toward it together.

Traffic and Congestion
These issues are not going to go away and THE most important thing we can do to help relieve them is to reduce our reliance on auto trips when we can. We need to assure that our businesses throughout the city and including the city have significant programs for commute trip reduction. We need to assure that we have transit alternatives (that are used). We need jobs that allow people who work in Kirkland to live in Kirkland. And we all need to be able to walk and bicycle along trails that connect all of our neighborhoods and business districts.

The Budget and the Economy
The current council does not have representation from the Kirkland small business community. As a business owner here for so many years, I know what it’s like to have to survive both in better times and in this environment as well. We are all hurting and my business is living it. We need an informed voice on the council to help us navigate though what may be lingering difficult times.

Right now what people care about and are talking about is economic recovery – jobs, making sure our businesses don’t leave town or fail altogether. That requires fiscal responsibility by the city. The city should only spend on essential services police, fire, public safety infrastructure -all else is second tier. In other words we need to cut non essential city services .

Our city budget require transparency which leads to confidence which leads to trust . The average citizen should be able to go to the city webpage and easily find and evaluate the budget and see the efforts the city is making to get us through these times.

Everyone is tightening their belts, every home owner, every business, is trying to stay alive right now. The city has got to do the same thing.

Placing a head tax on businesses was irresponsible and a clear demonstration that this council doesn’t get it.

We are all going to have to do with less until we get through this.

Downtown Development and Density
Having owned a retail business downtown for 25 years I understand the true condition of the downtown business environment. Downtown Kirkland can be a vibrant, exciting place but it is not without serious challenges. There is way too much turnover in businesses, traffic congestion is a problem, and parking has been a constant struggle for decades. The city needs to more carefully define what it means by “retail” on the ground floor of mixed use developments. We should work harder at creating stores with goods and services our residents want so they do not have to get in their cars every time they need a garden hose or clothes for their children.

Parking is a tough problem; nevertheless there are common sense approaches we can use. I believe we need to effectively use the surplus parking spaces available to residents and customers in the private parking lots which exist all over the downtown core.

Ultimately, we need a new public parking structure and hopefully we can partner that with some of the currently evolving construction projects but for now, we can do a lot by being smart about the spaces we already have.

Totem Lake
When will it ever become the center of economic activity Kirkland needs? This question has been asked for over 20 years and is still unanswered. In this economic environment the prospects for development are not encouraging.

However, the expansion of the transit center at Evergreen and the new medical office building should help.

I will work to assure the Kirkland City Council makes the redevelopment of Totem Lake the center piece of its economic redevelopment strategy. The current council has been at the job for 4 years with very little to show for it. Totem Lake Mall continues to be an embarrassment. As a long time retail business owner I have a perspective that is badly needed on the council as it grapples with the difficult task of promoting a retail center.

Annexation
When it’s all said and done and the numbers are all in I hope that we can proceed with annexation. I believe it is our obligation to meet our regional responsibility, a responsibility Kirkland accepted more than 15 years ago. We have already cherry picked all the revenue producing areas. People who have called Kirkland home for 20 years are being denied the services they were promised and deserve. It is our regional responsibility to accept the areas that were subscribed to Kirkland in 1990 and the State is willing to help. This will more than likely be our last opportunity to take advantage of the State’s offer of up to $40 million in deferred sales tax over a ten year period.

Most of the economic modeling I have seen is being re-evaluated with more modest assumptions about the needs for infrastructure, capital expense requirements and staff and it makes good sense to me. I think we should have looked at the numbers more conservatively from the beginning. The fact that the areas bring property taxes and not the more volatile sales tax is a good thing. Original assumptions about the opportunity to grow future sales tax from the annexation areas were low balled.

Kirkland is a city built stronger over the years through a series of annexations. This is the final addition which will complete our growth management responsibilities and allow us to plan for a a healthier future for Kirkland and our region.

Kirkland’s Environment
Kirkland is blessed with an incredible physical setting. Our community’s appeal is owed in large part to our commitment to a sustainable environment. We have urban forests and wildlife refuges are unparalleled in our region

Having participated in a lot of “Ivy pulls”, plantings and green Kirkland endeavors at multiple parks in Kirkland I continue to witness the tireless energy and commitment to sustainability so many of us Kirkland have when it comes to preserving our parks and open spaces.

Like every other city in our region, Kirkland experienced a building boom which, of course, puts added pressure on our environment. The city should be more aggressive in working with builders to encourage greater use of sustainable building practices including use of green roofs and recycled materials, drought resistant native plantings and integrated energy systems.