As I understand it, my collaborative style while serving on the North Bend Budget Committee as a citizen member, 2019-2022, motivated a few city councilors and leaders asked me to consider running.
So here I am.
These past three years on that committee, I have developed a deep respect for our city leaders, those “unelected bureaucrats” who manage to run the city on our shoestring budget.
Consider how North Bend’s $40 million to keep roads, water, sewer, police, fire and other functions that support our lives compare to the likely yearly sales of our local Walmart — approximately $50 million based on Walmart's 2020 Annual Report, undoubtedly with inflation this revenue level is higher, our city and county "coffers" are quite a bit smaller in direct comparision and relative to what our governments require to keep roads, sewers, and other essential systems afloat.
Corporate entities like Walmart rely on municipal infrastructure for their brisk business and, at the same time, outstrip our city’s annual resources while managing significantly less. That says a lot about our city's public servants.
I ask a lot of questions. Our city leaders welcomed them with a thoughtfulness I’d never experienced from any of the investors, CEOs or other executives I’d come in contact with in my startup work life. Our city staffers have deep financial knowledge and local commitment at a level that dwarfs all the leaders I encountered in high tech all those years despite I rubbing elbows with some extremely wealthy people to whom we, as a culture, anoint as those with the superior ideas. Ha, I say! Not true, I say!
In the budget and council discussions, I experience a consistent hint of the process city leaders go through to move North Bend forward: an intellectual tetris performed by a collective of invested fellow citizens, some of whom are skilled, experienced and level-headed -- the city staffers and some of whom are unskilled, inexperienced and can get ahead of themselves -- us, the councilors. IMO, council is present to use our diverse perspectives and concerns as a way to vet ideas and courses of action staffers bring forward. When our community has tough choices, we need to represent as much of that community as we can.
I respect and appreciate this process of expressing individual viewpoints alongside collectively deciding. It would an honor to participate more and with support of my neighbors. We are in this together!
If you would like to read about other candidates, Vote411.org from the League of Women Voters has an excellent non-partisan sight that invites all candidates on the ballot to answer some questions.