Paul Roberts, longtime Everett council member, dies at 73

Published 12:18 pm Tuesday, June 30, 2026

EVERETT — Paul Roberts, a longtime city planner and a passionate environmental advocate who served terms on both the city council and school board in Everett, died on June 24. He was 73.

The cause of death was cancer, his wife, Marianne Roberts, told The Daily Herald on Monday.

Roberts, an Everett City Council member for over a decade, had extensive professional experience in municipal government. He had served in higher-up roles as a staff member at both Everett and Marysville, as well as working as a representative to regional agencies like the Puget Sound Regional Council Transportation Committee, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency and Sound Transit. Later in life, he also worked as a consultant helping cities across the state create and update climate action plans.

Family members and former colleagues remembered Roberts as both a deeply knowledgeable policymaker and a kind, positive person with a sense of humor.

“Everywhere you go, in every aspect of the city, he has had some impact,” Marianne Roberts said. “People loved working with him on any kind of project, because he brought so much to the table.”

Paul Anthony Roberts was born on June 30, 1952, in West Seattle, one of five children. From a young age, he had an interest in politics, taking part in Boys State, a high school mock government competition. In 1974, he graduated from Evergreen State College in Olympia, a small liberal arts school, with an major emphasis in urban planning. He entered the workforce as a housing planner in the Washington State governor’s office.

For a time, he moved on to Washington, D.C., serving as a chief of staff to congressman Norm Dicks through part of the 1980s. He helped suggest Everett as a location for a new naval base, which soon was soon built as Naval Station Everett. In 1986, Roberts moved back to the Puget Sound to work as a planning and land use consultant.

Around that time is when he met his wife, Marianne. They married in 1987.

Roberts then got the job as Everett’s planning manager in 1988, which he held for just over 15 years. He also spent time as a senior adviser in the Snohomish County Executive’s Office and as the director of public works for Marysville, before transitioning to consulting in 2008.

He served on the Everett City Council for 16 years, from 2005 to 2021. Roberts also served a term on the Everett Public Schools board of directors, from 1999 to 2005.

Since he was a young adult, he was passionate about environmental issues. As a policymaker, he tried to find ways to merge economic policy with the need to protect the environment, Marianne Roberts said.

“I recognized early in college, without clean air and clean water, you really don’t have a world worth living in,” he said on a 2017 podcast appearance.

For years, Roberts maintained a regular opinion column in The Daily Herald, “Eco-nomics,” which explored the intersection of climate change and economics and pushed for investments in clean energy. He submitted his final column just days before his death.

Jon Bauer, The Herald’s former opinion editor, said Roberts pitched the idea for the column to him a few years ago at the Everett Public Library, hoping to show readers that economic solutions to the issues of climate change could exist.

“Paul described himself as a policy wonk, but that didn’t keep him from communicating in straight-forward English,” Bauer wrote in an email. “That he kept writing up to the end is all the evidence one needs of his commitment to making sure his community understood there are workable solutions to the toughest problems facing us.”

Roberts was also a strong supporter of the arts in the city. He helped support projects like the Everett Performing Arts Center, the development of the Schack Arts Center and the Imagine Children’s Museum.

Policymakers and administrators in city government said Roberts’ knowledge of the environment, as well as land use planning and other aspects of government work, was critical to making him an effective council member.

Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin said Roberts was the first person to suggest that she should run for local office. She took a seat on the city council in 2015 before winning the mayoral race in 2017.

Franklin called Roberts “a Renaissance man” who left his mark in countless ways across the city, whether through environmental protections, the Navy base or the light rail project set to be built in Everett in the coming years.

“He treated everybody with professionalism and respect, but he was also very much human. He stewarded personal relationships and cared about people first,” Franklin said. “I felt like he actually knew and cared about me as a person, and not just as the mayor or the office I held.”

As a council member, Roberts would often be one to build consensus with his colleagues, Franklin said, using his education and background to help develop and evaluate policies.

“The reason he was on the council was to build a better world for Everett,” she said. “He used his experience and knowledge from his career, and his political acumen, to make sure he could do that work.”

Ray Stephanson, Everett’s longest-serving mayor, worked alongside Roberts both when he was the city’s planning director and when he joined the city council. Stephanson said Roberts loved Everett, served the community with integrity and continued working for a better world up until his death.

“What I always appreciated about Paul is that he was passionate about issues, passionate about the environment, but he was just a wonderful and kind human being,” Stephanson said. “At the end of the day, I always appreciated him as somebody to work with and as a friend.”

Council members who worked alongside him said he served as a mentor, someone with a wealth of experience they could count on for advice.

“He was just a great democratic leader, always there to work with anybody and collaborate to get good things done for the city,” said council member Judy Tuohy, who worked alongside Roberts on the dais for years.

Council member Scott Bader said Roberts had a great amount of knowledge while on the council. The two would often commute to Seattle together when Roberts needed to get to an early morning meeting and wanted an “HOV lane buddy,” Bader said. During the drives, Roberts would share anecdotes from past service in Congress and the city of Everett.

“It was just an enjoyable thing to do and a fun way to spend a commute, with a fellow council member who just had broad knowledge and was a nice guy,” Bader said.

Apart from his professional life, Roberts also had a passion for playing music. While he was still planning director at Everett, he formed a band with another planning director from nearby Lake Stevens. Roberts, who learned guitar in college as part of a bluegrass band, mostly played pedal or lap steel guitars.

A 2010 Herald article about his folk-rock band, named Nomad Fish, earned him the moniker “The wonk who rocks.”

Their songs — all originals — often touched on environmental or political topics, Marianne Roberts said. They practiced together every week and played at local events like Sorticulture.

“All of them were professionals in other areas, they weren’t trying do that as a living,” Marianne Roberts said. “But they were all really good musicians, and they all wrote songs. That was fun that it was original stuff.”

Outside of work, he spent time with his family; Roberts had three children and two grandchildren. Even with long hours on the job, he would help coach little league baseball for his son and take his daughter out to a barn to help her learn to ride horses, Marianne Roberts said.

Juggling his time on boards and commissions, working in government offices or spending time as a consultant meant that Roberts was a busy man for much of his professional life. But Marianne Roberts said the reason he worked so hard was because he truly loved his job and wanted to improve his community.

“It was never drudgery, going to work,” she said. “… He worked those hours because that’s how he wanted to do it, and because he wanted to do it right.”

Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.