My wife and I moved to Kirkland following our graduation. We found a funky old house, with a great view, for a lot cheaper than in Seattle. We now have two daughters who were born and raised here.
We started the precursor to our company, the Kirkland Builders Group in 1985. With the 20-year-old friendship from the Rudolph's, also of Kirkland, we have grown from an idea between two buddies, to a company that is the equivalent in size to 20 percent of the city of Kirkland's employee payroll and 1/3 of the income volume of our city.
Oh, and my wife? She still has me working on our first marriage.....
Two simple reasons:
Our youngest just graduated from school. She is beautiful, strong and as smart as her older sister, so there isn't much more we can do to raise her.
There is not one person on the current city council who has a Kirkland business, let alone a business near our size. That perspective is imperative for sound decision making that involves tens of millions of dollars of someone else's money.
For the last five years, we have not met any of our housing targets. If elected, I would be the only council member that was one of the co-authors of our city's Comprehensive Plan, accepted in 1995. This was at the end of the most lengthy process of planning in our city's history.
We are under mandate by the state to do better. I will be pursuing both a policy of "growing gracefully" that we were to have followed, per the work of all the hundreds of people involved in the planning process in the early '90s. I will be calling for the county to do a better job with their planning process to take the pressure off our city.
Once again, per the Grown Management Act, this is a mandate for our city by the state. The shortfall of $5 million per year, which is greater then 10 percent of our current city budget, can be mitigated by better zoning.
The county continues to do a poor job servicing this area, and we will bring this up to our standards. Annexation will be welcomed, following full community involvement on what they will need to do to be sustainable without increasing taxes on anyone.
Surprisingly enough it is public safety. Our fire and police personnel are working under extremely difficult circumstances. As our world continues it's war against terrorism, there are fewer federal resources available for our own people to do their job as well as they have done. We need more firefighters and more space for our police department. Sound city financial management, per my extensive business experience, will be utilized to increase the safety of our community, without raising taxes.
And it is pretty easy to read my lips.
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