Olympia City Council member Renata Rollins says she will step down when her term ends
Olympia City Council member Renata Rollins has announced that she will not seek re-election when her term expires at the end of 2021.
In an email sent out on Saturday, Rollins wrote that resistance to some of her ideas from within the council is part of what is motivating her not to run again.
“It’s no secret that adapting to my role and environment was an uncomfortable stretch for me, and others. I found myself at odds with certain interests when my proposals, statements and tactics directly confronted our obscene ‘normal,’ which protects wealth and property above the lives of everyday people,” Rollins wrote.
“I often felt stymied by bureaucratic norms, and my relationships with most council members were tenuous at best.”
Rollins, who was elected to a four-year term at the end of 2017, is known for her tendency to push against the status quo and take progressive positions outside the mainstream, even for a liberal city like Olympia.
In 2018, she introduced a motion to repeal a city ordinance that bans sitting or lying on city sidewalks, which did not pass.
Over the summer, Rollins was the only council member to vote against an exemption to the chemical weapons ban that allows Olympia Police Department (OPD) to use chemical weapons against vandalism suspects.
Most recently, she voted against a budget amendment that added $432,000 of funding to the police budget for additional training and to hire members of the Crisis Response Unit as full city employees (they are currently contractors) on the grounds that it should have been accompanied by cuts elsewhere in OPD’s budget.
Rollins also attracted attention in May for announcing that she was participating in a rent strike, which provoked a response letter from her landlord.
In her email on Saturday, Rollins said that despite her frustrations with the constraints of government, she still believes that progress is possible and laid out a vision for Olympia to move away from a “punitive” justice system, invest in public and non-profit housing, and pursue racial and economic equity.
“I’ve made my share of miscalculations, and I didn’t get to see everything to fruition I would have liked,” Rollins wrote. “At the same time, history shows transformative change is never comfortable or easy. Disrupting inertia and injustice brings conflict, and is rarely appreciated in real time.”
She also expressed support for newer members of council, such as Yen Huynh, who was appointed to fill state Rep. Jessica Bateman’s empty seat, as well as others who were finalists for Bateman’s seat.
On Wednesday, Dontae Payne announced his intention to run for Rollins’ seat.
Payne, who is a U.S. Army veteran and a new staff member for U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, got the second most votes in a ranked-choice voting process that took place on Jan. 5 for Bateman’s seat. While he ultimately lost to Huynh, both Mayor Cheryl Selby and council member Jim Cooper selected Payne as their first choice, while the remaining council members all ranked him second.
Every council member and Bateman have endorsed Payne’s campaign for Rollins’ seat, according to his announcement.
This story was originally published February 4, 2021 at 8:16 AM.
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