By Janice Podsada
Herald Writer
LYNNWOOD — Twenty-seven-year-old Tina Roberts had no idea what to tell a troop of Girls Scouts after they spent the evening watching the Lynnwood City Council in action.
"One councilman had his feet up on the desk, another one was asleep," she said.
"What could I tell them?" she asked.
The next night over dinner at the Tiki Hut Restaurant in Lynnwood, Roberts complained to a friend about the council’s rude behavior.
"Then why don’t you run?" asked a voice from the next table.
Roberts, a headstrong daughter from a career military family, mulled it over and decided — why not? She had nothing to lose.
"It was not easy," Roberts-Martinez, 56, said of her 1974 bid for a council seat, in which she unseated the incumbent.
How did the young political newcomer do it?
"I doorbelled the entire city," she said, an exercise that gained her support and derision. "I had more doors slammed in my face telling me to go home and have babies."
When she assumed her council seat, Roberts, whose daytime job was managing two Dairy Queens, heard she had been tagged the "dumb broad running for council" by some city officials.
But she did her homework, and spent, as she admits, too many weekends familiarizing herself with the issues.
She provided the council with another perspective.
"It’s good to have both men and women on the council. They listened to me. It’s good to have both sides."
It didn’t take long before city officials grew to respect her hard work and consensus-building skills.
The city grew as well. In 1974, Lynnwood’s population numbered 18,000 people; today, it’s more than 34,000.
One of her first critics in 1974, she said, was then-Mayor M.J. Hrdlicka
Eighteen years later when he retired, Hrdlicka, as well as former council members with whom she had worked with, were among those who urged her to run for mayor.
"You have the experience," said Hrdlicka, who served as Lynnwood’s mayor from 1968 to 1994.
In June, Lynnwood mayor Roberts-Martinez announced she would not run for a third term. The reasons were personal.
"I never thought at 56 I would get married again," said Roberts, whose first marriage ended in divorce when she was in her 20s.
"I was married to the city. I spent 18 years on the council and eight years as mayor."
She is proud of those years.
"I feel like I’m leaving the city in good shape with the traffic improvements I’ve been able to implement. There’s money from the county for the PFD (Lynnwood Public Facilities District). I feel good about that. And the city center, maybe now we’ll have a downtown."
Roberts-Martinez did admit, however, to introducing some unpopular legislation in her early years.
In 1974, one of her first ordinances outlawed horses on 196th Street SW.
"That was really unpopular," Roberts-Martinez said.
No stranger to the saddle, Roberts, who grew up in Montana, felt the increasingly busy street was no place for horses.
Time and traffic have proved her right on that one.
With a chuckle, she did admit, however, that her vision failed her in the late 1970s — "I opposed the construction of Alderwood Mall. I feared what it would do to small businesses."
She has changed her mind about the mall, one of the city’s greatest assets.
"It’s great to have it here — and small businesses can survive the arrival of a mall, if they have a good product."
Former councilwoman Sharon Rutherford, who served on the council from 1979 to 2000, said Roberts-Martinez did a good job in office.
"She worked her own kind of magic with the city. She’s probably one of the most honest people I’ve ever met."
Hrdlicka agreed.
"She was good out in public with people. She wasn’t mean or snotty — I was, kind of," he said with a laugh.
"She beat some fellows (out of office), and I think they were ticked off. She was the first woman councilwoman elected in the city, and she became the first woman mayor of Lynnwood.
"She had a tougher road to hoe than I did with the councils that she had. She was a woman, and they put it to her, and I thought that was unfair."
Roberts-Martinez was on every committee and board you could think of, Hrdlicka said. She was on the National League of Cities, the Human Resources Committee on the national level, and the Association of Washington Cities. And she was put on the state Transportation Improvement Board, he said.
Now Roberts-Martinez is stepping down. She and her new husband Frank Martinez, a probation officer, plan to see the country this spring.
After that, she’s not sure what’s next on the agenda.
"Cooking, knitting, gardening and putting out bird feeders," she said.
"Oh, I’ve joined a band. I’ve never played an instrument," she said, relishing the opportunity to start from scratch — just as she did 26 years ago, when she was a 27-year-old woman brash enough to think that she could win an election.
You can call Herald Writer Janice Podsada at 425-339-3029 or send e-mail to podsada@heraldnet.com.
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