MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Each City Council incumbent who’s term expires this year faces a single challenger, which means everything gets decided in the Nov. 6 General Election.
And this election could shape up to be an unofficial referendum on the future of Town Center, the multi-million dollar downtown redevelopment project the city plans, mostly along 56th Avenue West.
Mayor pro-tem Laura Sonmore, appointed to the council in 2000, was elected twice after that. She will face a challenge this time from Leonard French, a former Board of Adjustment member who closely follows city affairs.
John Zambrano, who’s serving in his first term on the council, faces a challenge for the Pos. 7 seat from Bill Knorr, 61, a 54-year city resident.
Knorr, who owns a portable heavy equipment repair business, has never run for public office.
He said he wants to be a “voice for the people,” adding, “I think we kind of lost that somewhere.”
A former youth sports coach and umpire, Knorr served on the city’s Parks Board for four years and the Garden Club for two years.
He’s been married for 40 years and he and his wife have sponsored more than 400 Foster children.
Knorr said he wonders why, after more than 1,000 people signed a neighborhood petition critical of what was then a Town Center proposal, the council voted unanimously to move forward with the redevelopment plan.
Community organizer Sharon Maynard, 65, will take on incumbent Michelle Robles for the Pos. 5 seat.
Maynard, who also is running her first campaign for public office, is a recent retiree who says she was planning on returning to self employment next fall as a life coach but “I could not ignore what was going on in this city.”
She said if elected, she’d push to improve citizen participation. Residents, she said, are often “not being heard” by the council and she said she finds the public hearing process to be an incomplete way for city officials to receive citizen input.
Maynard founded the group Mountlake Terrace Citizen Voices and publishes The Broadcast, a neighborhood newsletter.
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