Shoreline City Council candidate Doris McConnell and incumbent deputy mayor Maggie Fimia will face off in the race for position No. 4 in November.
According to McConnell the election is a pivotal one for Shoreline. She said she has always been passionate about community service and wants to give residents another choice in the race for the council position.
“It is in my nature to move toward and not away from a problem,” she said and added that she’s heard from residents that the council as a body is an embarrassment to the city .
“…The city of Shoreline does not deserve this reputation and the bottom line is that this is still a wonderful place to live and our elected officials need to reflect this quality,” McConnell said.
Fimia said she is hoping to return for another council term because she is a person who is capable of bringing many different voices together.
“I work very well with those who really want to do problem solving and are inclusive,” she said. “People want change, and people are getting change, and I want to be here for the next four years to help implement that change.”
An issue both Fimia and McConnell see arising more within the next four years is development.
According to Fimia, Shoreline residents are concerned about existing growth and feel betrayed when citizen involvement is lacking. She wants to pull the community back together and create a community vision for what the city should look like in the future.
“What I’m hearing is not any more strip malls not big box stores; it’s small neighborhood clusters, retail and commercial where we can go have a cup of coffee, rent a video,” she said.
Business along Aurora Avenue would be allowed to expand, according to Fimia, and from there would be stair steps down into neighborhoods. Each neighborhood would call for a look back at the comprehensive plan and growth would be supported by more real transit within the next three years.
Current zoning requirements do not appear to be maximized and McConnell said the fact makes her uncomfortable.
“I’ve told people I’m pulling the council back together and that you need to feel you can trust the whole body and not just parts of it,” she said. “With zoning we need to step through very carefully and respect what peoples’ angst are.”
McConnell said she hears angst over the city’s potential future involvement in Point Wells. She said that although Shoreline may end up annexing the area, she does not think neighbors welcome the change. Point Wells needs to be a collaboration of a council that can work together, she said.
Fimia said a problem needs to be identified and so do potential solutions and potential partners and costs when it comes to Point Wells. Potential impacts, not only to an access road but to services such as emergency personnel would also need to be identified.
“Annexing is potentially one of the solutions,” she said. “A problem is a large parcel of land with access only through Shoreline and so maybe the problem is there’s a potential lack of control about how that happens,” she said. “I don’t know what the answer is.”
She said there’s plenty of work to go around between council members and plenty of praise to accompany it in the next several years. Work could be divided amongst council members and the public would see a team process.
“Then the public sees who’s doing what so we’re not seen as one big group so when one is seen as dysfunctional, we’re all seen as dysfunctional,” she said. So things do need to change… I’m eternally optimistic.”
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