La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

The votes are mostly counted from La Conner residents deciding on three town council member positions in November’s election. In the first contested elections since 2015, voters elected challengers Ivan Carlson and Rick Dole and returned MaryLee Chamberlain to council. These three won in a high turnout election. Residents and candidates were all paying more attention than has occurred in years. That in itself is a good thing.

The existing council chose a new member at their meeting last night. The council representing the community in 2022 will be very different in almost every way from this year’s. If Annie Taylor was chosen to fill the seat left vacant by Jacques Brunisholz’s August resignation, she will create a majority female council, sitting at the table with Mary Wohleb and Chamberlain.

Taylor, like Carlson is younger, of working age. Both work to pay their bills. They represent a generational – and huge – change. Taylor owns her own business, Crescent Moon Yoga, and Carlson is a parent. He is also a fourth generation La Conner resident, making him a young old-timer.

The council member voted into office by the four incumbents will take her or his seat this month. When Carlson and Dole start in January three of the five members will be new. They will have to get acclimated. They have a lot to learn. They will have to take on responsibilities immediately.

They will be viewing the governing of the town with new eyes. Hopefully they will ask lots of questions. They will have a period of getting adjusted, but hopefully they will not be shy or worried about asking uninformed questions.

A council consisting of Taylor, Chamberlain and Wohleb offers a female and perhaps a feminist perspective. Whether that means they will be more compassionate, sensitive, smarter and perceptive will have to be seen. But the possibility is certainly there.

The three new members provide the entire council the opportunity to discuss among themselves their individual interests and their common causes, but also how they might work together. The town’s budget will be about $5.5 million next year. The town’s staff is not large. The job of council members is very much part time. How council members plan and devote their time by working together can make a large difference in what they accomplish for the town and the council as a whole as well as for themselves as individual members.

Carlson and Dole filed to run last May. They have been thinking, discussing and advocating for their view of the town’s present moment and the possibilities for the future for half a year. They will continue to prepare themselves for their positions through the end of the year. Of all the qualities, similarities and differences the council – new and returning members – will have, the most common, and perhaps largest feature is that the election was contested.

Voter turnout was high, perhaps 55%, while countywide about 41% of residents voted. The candidates actively sought the community’s votes. They talked to people. They shared their concerns and hopes. Hopefully they listened to residents when they knocked on doors and were visible in town.

For both council members and residents, this is an experience that needs to be built on and not put away with yard signs.

The candidates have asked residents to pay attention. That is a good thing. Now attention must be paid on an ongoing basis. That is the job of citizenship and representative democracy.

This is written before the council meeting and projects a hope ahead of the final creation of reality.