At the Dec. 5, Snohomish City Council, six people brought up the importance of hiring an economic development person for our town to continue to thrive.
We need to keep our local business strong and recruit new businesses as 52 percent of the city’s revenue comes from sales tax. Three of our current council members, Karen Guzak, Jason Sanders and Lynn Schilaty all said this should be a top priority. Four citizens brought up the importance of bridge building, to bring our community together after a contentious election. One person apologized for his poor behavior, but sadly that was short-lived as in less than 10 days he continued with his harassment of eight citizens with the republishing of a harassment page with personal information.
At the end of meeting the new mayor, John Kartak, seemed tone deaf to these issues as he addressed neither economic development or bridge building, and instead brought up a person’s concern about poor road conditions. The new mayor expressed how he owned that problem but failed to state that city had already budgeted to fix it. Then, the new mayor brought up the non-issue of safe injection sites (something that this city has no plans to do and not one has even considered as there isn’t the demand or infrastructure) but his friend and “brother,” the man that keeps harassing citizens, brought it up and the new mayor chose to echo and amplify his “brother’s” voice by adding this non-issue item to the very first agenda in his tenure.
It is disappointing to me that the new mayor would so easy dismiss actual Snohomish issues and council goals. Homelessness and addiction are a priority for the council but this non-issue, for Snohomish addresses neither and is a complete distraction. Are we going to continue to be distracted with issues that take place in Seattle, or Lynnwood or Marysville?
Mr. Kartak is disregarding the real issues at home.
Mary Curry
Snohomish
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