Vanderpool to seek election to Olympia City Council seat after one-year appointment
Robert Vanderpool was appointed to Position 6 on the Olympia City Council nearly a year ago. He told The Olympian Tuesday that he’s launching a campaign to retain his seat and be voted in by the public in 2025.
Vanderpool said he’s motivated to seek election by the work the council has put in throughout the last year, and his desire to see that work through to the end.
He said housing, transportation and the cost of living are issues he wants to tackle, but there are other issues that need to be addressed before those can be addressed.
He referenced the budget deficit the City of Olympia faced this fall and the number of layoffs that resulted from it.
“When we got the budget back this last year, we found out that the sales tax was not going to get us to where we needed to be. We had to readjust our budget rather quickly,” he said. “Like a lot of cities and counties and the state, we all ran into quite a quick deficit ... and so we had to make a lot of adjustments and changes and allow people to retire early.”
Vanderpool said he feels encouraged by the fact the council has been able to begin to address the larger issues such as housing and cost of living.
“There’s a lot of things that we have to tackle that are huge, larger than the city, but for me, it’s being able to go talk to these people and the public, individuals, small business owners, and hear out what are the issues they’re dealing with, and seeing what can we do as a city to understand, to begin to understand where we need to go,” he said.
Vanderpool said the work the council did around tenant protections at the beginning of the year was a big step in addressing housing insecurity and the high cost of living.
“This is all kind of an attempt to slow it down. We have working class people who might fall into homelessness if we don’t do something about it,” he said. “There are lots of people who are working, who end up becoming homeless or in one of our shelters, or in one of our transitional housing (sites) and so to shift to doing stuff that’s more direct, this is as close as we can get with housing to be able to slow it down for people.”
He said for the council, it’s about shifting towards the needs of the renter-majority city.
“The last thing we want is to have a city that no one can afford to live in,” he said.
Why Vanderpool?
Nobody else has officially announced their candidacy for the council position, but Vanderpool said voters should choose him because he listens.
“I kind of fill in a position where I’ve been able to listen to and be flexible with both the people I’m used to hearing from, but also over this last year, I think one of my strengths I have found is my ability to spend time listening to members of the public, even people that oppose the type of policies we’re working on.”
On the Workers’ Bill of Rights and minimum wage increase the city council will be considering in 2025, Vanderpool said he’s spent time looking at both sides of the issue. He said he doesn’t want the council to pass something that creates undue consequences for small businesses and nonprofits, but he also has to acknowledge that a lot of Olympians are just getting by.
“So having these conversations, asking the questions directly, it’s kind of what I enjoy doing as a council member, and something that I think is unique to myself, because I don’t take a hard stance all the time,” he said. “I’m often learning from the general public in Olympia.”
Vanderpool said he’s uniquely positioned to retain his seat on the council.
“I’m a state worker. I’m working class. I don’t own a home. I’m a renter. I have connections in labor and unions,” he said.
Vanderpool said he’s willing to hear people out on all issues affecting Olympians.
“I value having coffee with people. I value hearing people out, and I value communicating on what we do at the city,” he said. “So if people come to me and say they have a criticism, I will read their email and if you have time, I’ll schedule coffee or just sit down and hear out their concerns and then talk about where we are at the city and generally talk about where we are and hear their concerns. It normalizes the situation.”
Vanderpool has a master’s degree in public administration and a bachelor’s degree in political history from The Evergreen State College. As a council member, he serves as a member of the Land Use and Environment Committee, the Transportation Policy Board, and the Sea Level Rise Governance Committee.
This story was originally published December 31, 2024 at 12:46 PM.
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