Dear Neighbor,
I’d like to share with you why I’d like your vote and support for my candidacy for Snohomish County Council.
The Best Candidate
I have the leadership skills, communications ability, focus and determination that Snohomish County needs to handle tremendous challenges. I have taken an active and successful role toward eliminating poor development methods such as Fully Contained Communities (FCC’s or mini-cities) and positively shaping workable ones. We must plan more wisely for growth, as our farmland and rivers, transportation, environment, schools, and essential services are at stake. My demonstrated ability to work with others and create productive relationships is evidenced by my many endorsements, and will help us build a better county together.
Background
After graduating from Stanwood High School I earned a bachelor’s degree from Central Washington University in Mass Communications and Political Science with a minor in economics. I worked 10 years in journalism and the next decade as a small business owner/marketing consultant. I have volunteered on a health clinic board, schools, 4-H programs, and served on the County’s stakeholder committee on Fully Contained Communities and am on the Steering Committee of Snohomish County Tomorrow. I have raised twin daughters, now 33-years-old and with small children of their own, and have since been blessed with a 7-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son.
Economic development
We need to nurture small businesses while ensuring industries such as aerospace and construction have the tools they need to succeed here. The Green Energy trend, such as solar and biomass businesses, has potential. We must work toward creating the critical mass that will keep a viable farming community and fix the Transfer of Development Rights program so that it actually works to save farmland. This program has not functioned since its creation and we have little time to waste. We cannot ignore our tremendous resources of transportation infrastructure, waterways and airports. We must capitalize on these resources and look seriously at other opportunities. I am promoting a discussion among a broad-base of organizations and government entities to determine the potential of a county-wide port district. Such an entity could enter into public-private partnerships and property development, capitalizing on our resources in ways the County cannot. This deserves a hard look.
Priorities
We must protect our quality of life, starting with ensuring we have made the safety of our citizens as first priority, giving our sheriff’s deputies the tools they need. Quality of Life entails the gamut of life: keeping traffic moving; family-wage jobs; environmental integrity; the protection of our vulnerable; sidewalks for our children to walk to school. In the process of balancing the competing interests that impact all the elements that make up our quality of life, we must be certain that our process is equitable, that citizens have a say in how these are balanced, and that small businesses are treated as equitably as the large. Equity. Fairness. Integrity. That’s how we build a better county together.
Sincerely,
Ellen Hiatt Watson