The field is getting crowded.
Two more applicants for the vacant position on the Langley City Council have turned in their paperwork to city hall.
They are Thomas Gill, a young Langley native making his third attempt to join the council, and Kathleen Waters, a property owner in the city since 1976 who has been a consistent critic of city government.
They join Hal Seligson, a retired government hospital administrator, and Robin Adams, an international management consultant, in seeking to fill the unexpired Position 2 term of Russell Sparkman, who resigned from the five-member council in early October. The term runs through 2013, but an election will be held next November for the remainder of Sparkman’s term.
Those interested in the position have until Monday, Dec. 13 to submit an application form, résumé and a letter to city hall. The council
is expected to interview candidates at its Dec. 20 regular meeting.
The council will then vote to select the new member in an open session, and the new council member will be sworn in later that same evening.
Thomas Gill
Gill grew up in Langley and graduated from South Whidbey High School in 2001. He currently lives at his parents’ home in Langley while finishing a degree in computer engineering at Kettering University in Michigan. He works in technical support at Whidbey Telecom.
Gill has spent the past 18 months attending city council meetings and steeping himself in issues facing the city.
In 2009, his election bid against Sparkman fell short, as did his bid to be appointed to the council position vacated by Jim Recupero earlier this year, a position that went to Fran Abel.
Gill hopes the third time will be the charm.
“I’m just hoping to get a fair shake from the council,” he said Thursday. “I’m up to speed on all the goings-on of the council and the city in general.
“This is just a continuation of what I’ve been trying to do for the past year,” he said, “to get on the council and bring another voice to the proceedings.”
Gill has definite views on controversial issues.
He said he would have approved Langley Passage, the 20-lot subdivision in the Edgecliff neighborhood that was rejected by the council this past month, only to be hung up by legal scrutiny.
Gill said Langley Passage meets all the criteria for a development in the city and should have been approved.
“I live in the same neighborhood, and see no logical reason to deny it,” he said of the proposed development. He said updates to the area to include sewers, storm drains, sidewalks curbs and gutters “should have been done years ago.”
“If we don’t do the right thing with that development, we’ll be up to our ears in debt from a lawsuit,” Gill said. “The best idea is to work with the developer to get this finished.”
As for general development, he said the past few decisions of the largely appointed council have demonstrated a no-growth attitude that doesn’t benefit the city.
“The city staff and the council seem to be on diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum,” Gill said. “We need to be bringing more people into the city, however it can be done.”
He said tourism should be more heavily promoted, and that perhaps breaks in taxes and utility fees offered “to encourage people to move here.”
And he said he would work to provide sewers and sidewalks to everyone in the city.
“No sidewalks means no respect,” Gill said.
As for dealing with the city’s budget woes, Gill said he would look to make more cuts in the planning, public works and perhaps the police departments, rather than in the finance department, “which is already overworked.”
He said that in any case, he would prefer to cut work hours than to lay off more employees.
“Cutting people makes it difficult to get business done,” he said.
Regarding the ongoing controversy over Mayor Paul Samuelson’s salary, Gill said that while he may not have structured the office the way it is, the mayor “should be paid for the job he’s doing.”
“He’s a full-time mayor and deserves full-time compensation,” he added. “It makes perfect sense.”
Despite its shortcomings, the current mayor-council system of government still works better for Langley than a city manager form, Gill said.
“I’ve never liked that form of government,” he said. “Right now, the mayor can be a dissenting voice against the council, while a city manager is just a hired employee.”
In his application letter, Gill said the city “is at a crossroads,” but that it’s not too late for it to develop into a community “that meets the needs of residents for housing, employment and recreation.”
“I know what it takes to meet these goals,” he said.
Kathleen Waters
Waters has an extensive background in management, consulting, teaching and lecturing in the healthcare field, and has co-authored three books on the subject.
She has owned property on Wharf Street at the Langley Marina, and currently lives in a cabin there, the front half of which serves as the harbormaster’s office.
Her bid for the city council seat is only her second attempt to serve in city government in any capacity. Earlier this year, she applied for the position of alternate on the Planning Advisory Board which ultimately went to Gail Fleming.
Waters said she has kept abreast of city issues, and she has been combative at times in debates regarding the business community and planning issues, especially involving the Wharf Street Overlay Plan that was adopted in 2009.
Waters said she feels her outsider status, combined with her knowledge of the issues, would serve the city well.
“I think the city council needs a new voice from somebody who hasn’t been an insider in the social or political scene in Langley,” she said Thursday.
“I’m not steeped in environmentalism or in seeing my constituents as neighbors, and therefore wouldn’t worry about offending them with decisions that they don’t agree with,” she added.
She said one of her primary goals on the council would be to increase transparency in local government by any means possible, including online and radio coverage of meetings.
“I’m fully aware that our views on many issues … are widely disparate,” Waters wrote in her application letter. “My interest in serving on the council is precisely because of our many differences.”
Waters is in favor of the Langley Passage development, and she said it would be foolish to jeopardize federal funds by delaying the construction of a new public parking lot at the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church at Sixth Street and Camano Avenue.
She said the city should be allowed to grow in accordance with the Growth Management Act, and that officials should spend more resources on promoting tourism and economic vitality.
“Let Langley grow as it should, under the law,” Waters said.
“It’s not good for Langley to have a no-growth attitude,” she added. “We should put more money in that area, and maybe less in parks, until we get stabilized and get Langley back where it belongs.”
Waters said she would use her talent for research to look for ways to revitalize the city. She said she would put more emphasis on Main Street, a federal program to enhance local signage and image.
“I want to see the city succeed and return to the kind of economic climate we had in the 1990s and early 2000s,” she said. “I believe its possible to do that with the right people working toward the same goals.”
Waters said the exact nature of the mayor position should be nailed down before the next election, so that everyone knows what to expect.
“You can’t ask somebody to run when you don’t know what the position is,” she said. “In fact, we need to take a real look at the whole structure of the city.”
Waters said that adding her to the table would change what she perceives as a clubbish nature of the current council.
“They have a big track record of unified voting on every decision they make,” she said. “There’s seldom ever a dissenting comment, if they even hold a discussion. They always seem to vote as a block.”
“I believe there’s a strong need for a different voice,” Waters wrote in her application letter. “I have a passion for Langley that abides in spite of current and recurring setbacks to the city.”
