Ross Kane served on the Snohomish County Council from 1990 to 1993, a time of rapid growth in the county. A champion of growth management and the environment, he long ago left the political arena. He never lost his love for the place that was home.
Kane, 65, died Saturday at his Warm Beach home after a long struggle with congestive heart failure.
“He was always a political guy, even in high school,” said Helen Kane, his wife of 45 years and his high school sweetheart from Everett High’s class of 1967.
He went on to graduate, with a degree in English, from the University of Washington. The environment became his political focus.
A Democrat, Kane represented County Council District 1, northern Snohomish County. He lost his seat to Republican John Garner, a former Marysville city manager, in a 1993 race that saw voters favor property rights over Kane’s push for growth management. Garner served one term.
“The abiding interest he had in the environment was really based on the water — being on the shore,” his widow said Thursday.
Kane was a former board member of the Cascade Land Conservancy, now Forterra.
“Ross brought courage and original thinking to county government, which made for a too-short political career,” said Peter Jackson. A former Herald editorial writer and son of the late U.S. Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, he and Kane shared a keen interest in environmental issues. He described Kane as “a headstrong, creative, kind man who cared passionately about his community.”
Born April 20, 1949, Kane grew up in Everett. Besides his wife, he is survived by their son, Cameron Kane, 34, and by brothers Jim and Bruce Kane.
Helen Kane described her husband as a true “Everett boy.” They later moved into a house Kane built himself at Warm Beach.
Before his time on the County Council, Kane worked in social services and as a grant writer. Colleagues credited Kane for helping to keep Snohomish County PUD rates stable after the Washington Public Power Supply System default in the early 1980s.
Chuck Shigley, then a PUD commission administrator, has long been a friend and neighbor of Kane’s. Shigley’s fun memories of Kane include their performances in Stanwood parades as part of the Warm Beach Lawnmower Drill Team.
During the complicated WPPSS case, Shigley said, Kane worked for one of the attorneys defending the PUD, which stood to lose many millions of dollars. After construction was stopped on the nuclear power plants in the 1980s, WPPSS defaulted on more than $2 billion in bonds.
Kane pored over documents, summarizing them for PUD attorneys. His work helped PUD commissioners hold out for a better settlement, saving ratepayers millions of dollars.
“We needed good minds, and recruited him to do research for us,” said Peter Newland, a former PUD commissioner, close friend and neighbor.
A skilled writer in his professional life, in 2011 Kane published a novel, his first, titled “And Wasn’t It Grand.”
The Prohibition-era tale was set in Kane’s native Everett and in Victoria, British Columbia. The plot drew on the author’s love of fishing and boating.
Kane was an avid reader and “inveterate book buyer,” his wife said.
For a time, the Kanes owned a sailboat, and he crewed on other boats in sailing races. He had built several boats, and recently had been building a small sailboat with his son.
“Ross was very relationship oriented, and had a wicked sense of humor,” Newland said.
In a 2011 Herald interview about his novel, Kane expressed distaste for today’s contentious political climate.
“It’s very difficult to be successful if you’re not colleagues. That doesn’t mean you have to agree all the time, but it does mean you have to be civil all the time,” Newland said Thursday. “Ross was a good one. He put people first every time — a quality we need more of.”
Celebration of life
A celebration of life for Ross Kane is scheduled for 4 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Sons of Norway Normanna Hall, 2725 Oakes Ave., Everett.
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