Many qualities can make a leader electable — fewer qualities make a truly effective mayor benefitting a whole community. I support John Marchione for re-election to mayor, to continue leading Redmond on the creation of more quality choices for our city’s future.
Providing achievable choices is one of the best qualities of a constructive manager as well as an effective leader — as a council member then mayor, Marchione has crafted enduring options by which Redmond’s people may reliably choose an action to fulfill aspirations for their city.
Many Redmond residents the last months have highlighted the many choices fellow residents have available out of Marchione’s leadership on two central points of this campaign: local participation in their city government’s processes and outcomes and regional growth.
As those others wrote, I, too, trust Marchione will continue to:
• Cultivate a Redmond culture that seeks input and listens to the choices of its residents — from improved daily customer service by city staff, to support of the volunteer commissions and task forces developing a breadth of citizen feedback to council.
• Foster a unified city with a broad scope of citizen activities and city staff work enthusiastically coalesced around a vision for the city — directly influence what and how each fulfills their aspects of that vision.
• Sharpen the civic role in Redmond’s current Budgeting by Priorities — more citizens than ever have direct access to the city budget, and influence priorities for funding those services most important to residents (this process works — after months of deliberation on the mayor’s proposed budget, council chose to not change the allocations to revenue, expense or investment).
• Lead a council in regional leadership for smart growth, multimodal transportation and transit, affordable housing options and public safety. Redmond can stay ahead in the creation of options for choosing how continued growth (growth has always been here) is shaped to keep a desirable community in which to live, work, learn and play.
• Apply his substantial experience chairing and actively serving on regional boards, commissions and task forces — effectively representing the city to various stakeholders while ensuring the city gets the solutions it needs (challenges from traffic and growth do not start at our city limits!).
• Create housing option choices in Redmond’s urban centers for growth that comes with prosperity to have the least impact to the rest of the city and prevent further sprawl in established residential neighborhoods (the State Growth Management Act requires Redmond to accept its share of regional projected growth — 13,000 more people over 20 years).
• Smartly refine a growth-management strategy for growth to pay for growth — Redmond collects fees on all new development for impacts on transportation, parks, fire and utilities and collects local business tax dedicated to road construction improvements.
• Preserve land for parks in growing areas for quality of life of current and future residents.
I support John Marchione to continue leading us forward on Redmond’s choices.
Byron Shutz
Redmond City Council member
