By The Herald Editorial Board
There is no lack of experience or dedication to public service among the candidates for Lynnwood mayor.
Both candidates — mayor Christine Frizzell and council member George Hurst — can call on impressive resumes in careers and public service.
Hurst, with a master’s degree in American history, has added to his training with the Association of Washington Cities certificate of municipal leadership and Leadership Snohomish County’s Signature Program. He has also served on the AWC’s legislative priorities committee.
Hurst, a city resident of 32 years, working in the commercial electrical and lighting sector, is serving his third term on the council since first winning election in 2015, and has twice run for the mayor’s office; in 2017 against Nicola Smith and in 2021 against Frizzell. His current term on the council runs through 2027. He has served three times as council president. Previous to joining the council he served on the city’s planning commission and Community Emergency Response Team.
Frizzell won election to the council in 2017, then won election to the mayor’s office in 2021, defeating Hurst. She first became interested in the city’s workings when attending the city’s “Lynnwood University” program, a five-week civics program for community members, 12 years ago.
Frizzell, who grew up and attended schools in Lynnwood, has a bachelor’s in accounting and has worked in the sector for 40 years as an accountant and tax preparer. In 2022, she completed the AWC’s advanced certificate of municipal leadership.
Frizzell said she’s running for reelection to provide residents someone who is concerned with the issues they are concerned about. Top among the priorities is public safety, because that sense of safety drives decisions about all other subjects on housing, local businesses, parks, transportation and more, she said.
As an example, she said, the city arranged with Sound Transit to provide about $385,000 to Lynnwood to offset the costs of regular patrols by Lynnwood Police at the city’s Link light-rail terminus.
That sense of safety is key for businesses, too, she said.
“When somebody starts a new business, they bring their life savings, they bring their family, they bring all their expertise to the city and the neighborhood. And I want to continue to see small businesses thrive here,” Frizzell said.
Hurst agrees on the importance of a safe and accessible city, he said, but worries about how the city can provide for that safety facing a significant budget shortfall in the short term and structural problems with the city’s finances.
Hurst is blunt about the cause of the financial crisis, calling it “self-induced” and believing it should be the main focus of the race.
“It’s not created by any type of economic downturn in Lynnwood. It’s been created by inaccurate economic forecasts that were built into the budget,” he said.
While the latest figures show Lynnwood confronting a budget hole of about $10.7 million before the most recent round of cuts and adjustments, Hurst said he believes that figure should be doubled when looking at the council’s biennial (two-year) budget process.
Nor is he happy with what he sees as a lack of transparency from the city administration. As chairman of the council’s finance committee, Hurst said he’s asked for budget details and explanations without a satisfactory response.
Frizzell acknowledges the economic forecasts the city used in budgeting were off and led to overestimates of revenue, but that was an experience shared by other cities, the county and even the state itself. The city was expecting a 5 percent increase in sales tax revenues, she said, as well as an increase in revenue from permit fees and inspections as Lynnwood continued its growth.
“On the development and business side, we’ve had amazing growth in the last three to five years, and we anticipated that growth to continue,” Frizzell said, noting major construction projects that had been planned but are now on hold.
Some of that pullback in development is uncertainty over the economy, the Trump administration’s tariffs and the current Federal Reserve interest rate, which influences lending and mortgage rates.
But the revenue from the city’s traffic cameras also came in under expectations.
Hurst said the forecasts for the traffic cameras shouldn’t have surprised the city as the city has seen fairly steady revenue of about $4 million to $5 million from the cameras.
Frizzell said camera revenue was off, in part, because some cameras had been switched off during road construction projects. When the work was done, and the cameras were turned back on, the city saw an unexpected jump in fine revenue from those cameras, leading to inaccurate assumptions about that revenue’s trends, she said.
In terms of what the city finances mean for public safety, Hurst noted — at the time of this interview in late August — there were eight vacancies on the police department and a hiring freeze was in place.
“I think this economic crisis is putting our residents in danger,” he said.
Frizzell disputed the term hiring “freeze,” noting the positions are approved but can’t be filled until funding is available. “We don’t want to hire police officers only to lay them off,” she said.
The goal, she said, has been to restore the department of staffing levels it saw in 2008, which allowed it to have officers serving in specialty units.
Noting the importance of local businesses to the city’s finances, Hurst raised continuing concerns regarding retail theft, noting a program to address shoplifting between the department and city prosecutor that lost city funding. Hurst had hoped to use expected funds from an opiate settlement to restore that program, but without success thus far.
Hurst urges a restructuring of the city’s budget process, perhaps modeling itself after Edmonds, which also is facing a deep budget hole. It has used a panel of community stakeholders and budget experts to discuss priorities and options and reconsider how it uses forecasts of revenue and costs.
Frizzell counters that the existing process already makes provisions for community input, comment and transparency.
Hurst has diagnosed structural issues in how the city gathers its financial information and uses that in making its revenue and spending decisions; a more cautious attitude regarding forecasts and projections would now serve Lynnwood better, as it would more broadly for several of the cities in the county.
Yet, Frizzell also shows caution in recognizing that the city can’t fill — for example — vacancies on the police department, until it knows it can sustain those positions longer term.
Hurst has more than proved his value to Lynnwood as a veteran member of the council and a voice for budgetary caution and transparency; his leadership and institutional knowledge regarding the full range of issues before the city have been key to its success.
Frizzell, however, has succeeded in her first term as a skilled leader who promotes the city’s interests and is invested in protecting and advancing opportunities for one of the county’s most diverse, quickly growing and livable communities.
Voters should give Frizzell a second term.
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