Biggest challenges, opportunities facing Lacey? Here’s how the candidates responded

There was no primary election for Lacey City Council, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people running to be elected in November’s general election.

In fact, there are six candidates running for council, and they gathered Wednesday afternoon at a Lacey South Sound Chamber of Commerce luncheon to field questions from moderator Jon Halvorson, a former Lacey mayor.

Running for election are incumbents Carolyn Cox and Michael Steadman, plus newcomers Evette Temple, Ryan Siu, Charles Beck and Maren Turner. Steadman was absent, in Indianapolis to attend the funeral of his first commanding officer in the Marine Corps Reserve, he told The Olympian.

Incumbent Robin Vazquez is not running for re-election and Steadman decided to vacate his Position No. 6 seat to challenge Cox for Position No. 7. Turner and Beck are running for Vazquez’s Position No. 4 seat, while Temple and Siu have lined up to fill Steadman’s old seat.

One of the key questions posed during the discussion was this: What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing Lacey? Here’s what they had to say.

The general election is Nov. 4.

Position No. 4

Charles Beck

“Well, again, of the three cities, the three largest cities, you know, Lacey, Olympia and Tumwater, I think Lacey is the best city to operate in, to live in,” said Beck, who previously worked for the state Legislature and Snohomish County and is an auctioneer.

“Look, I’m concerned about just the growth of regulatory requirements on businesses, whether it’s a small business starting out or something else. I really was not super familiar with the growth of Hawks Prairie until I started knocking on doors out there and dealing with some of the businesses there. And we’ve got some great growth, positive growth in the Hawks Prairie area. And so we just need to continue to move forward with the positive things we can and then again, I guess you could call me kind of a budget hawk. I want to look very carefully at where we’re spending money and make sure that it’s being used for proper purposes.”

Maren Turner

“I absolutely love Lacey,” said Turner, who previously identified herself as a gerontologist but who also works for the state Department of Social and Health Services. “Let me tell you. I have lived in a number of places, and I love Lacey.”

“I recently had the opportunity to go on a ride along with the (police’s) Community Resource Unit, as well as the regular patrol, and I walked away with such a renewed respect for that small but mighty group. They are fabulous. I watched how they worked with people who are unhoused. I watched their compassionate approach to working with people who were in camps or who were on sidewalks. It didn’t matter. So I think we have, I don’t know if the budget would allow it, but I’d love to see that unit expanded. I think that’s an opportunity, because they are absolutely just fabulous.

“And as far as challenges, I’m always going to talk about housing and getting our arms around how to solve this problem, and one thing we may need to do is to redefine what it means to be unhoused so that we can better address the problem.”

Position No. 6

Carolyn Cox

“I think the greatest challenges, at least in the short term, are going to be economic,” she said. “One of the things that Lacey is facing is we’re running out of buildable land, and that means we either redevelop within the existing city limits and or, and it’s probably both, we begin annexing, but annexing is a difficult proposition because it means we have to extend city services to the areas that we annex, and often those are residential areas that don’t generate a lot of sales tax, and it actually costs the city more to absorb than the return on revenue.

“We have had wonderful, conservative stewardship of the city finances. We have very healthy reserves, and it’s enabled us to do things like build the police station that’s going to be opening in the coming winter here. We had good reserve funds that we were able to dedicate toward that, so we didn’t have to take on a whole lot of indebtedness. So I think those kinds of stewardship of the funds we have are going to help us into hopefully a much brighter future. Right now, it feels like storm clouds are upon us, but I think we’re going to come through it.”

Position No. 7

Ryan Siu

“I do love this question because it helps us think about our city critically,” said Siu, who works as program analyst with the Washington State Office of Public Defense. “I believe that some of the hardest things that are going to be coming to our city are going to be budgetary. We’re going to be running into a lot of those issues coming up in the near future, as well as some of our biggest challenges right now, which is how we deal with our housing crisis.

“I‘m really, really excited about and want to help the city grow sustainably, environmentally and inclusively in the future, but in terms of challenges, yes, the budget is going to be a massive, massive issue, and I think that we’re going to have to think very creatively and outside the box in order to help overcome some of those issues. I have a big stack of research next to me, and I love researching, and so I think that is something that we can work on together.”

Evette Temple

“I’m going to start with the challenges,” said Temple, a commercial banking officer. “I don’t know if many of you realize it but I was appointed by Lacey City Council to be a Human Services Commissioner, and I think our biggest challenges are socio-economic. I think that we are looking at, because of things that are happening at a federal level, of losing probably 50% of our nonprofits that we have here in Thurston County in the next two years.

“To be quite frank, the good thing we have is our business culture,” she said. “We have a phenomenal business culture in Lacey. We have a lot of giving, caring people here that are ready to put aside party lines. You know, united we stand, divided we fall, right? And I feel like Lacey is very much more set than any other community. And give us a hand. We’re the largest city now in Thurston County. We have the people, we have the heart, we have the experience. And I think that if we all come together and we put our heads together that we will, we will continue to grow.”