Following a contentious presidential election, voters’ moment to reflect and recover is over.

This week signals the beginning of Washington’s 2017 election season, as candidates across the state file for local seats. Since this is an off-year election with no statewide races on the ballot, most of the offices open in 2017 are local. In Mercer Island, there are three seats up for grabs on the City Council, as the terms for Councilmembers Dan Grausz (Position 2), Jeff Sanderson (Position 4) and Benson Wong (Position 6) will expire at the end of the year. Grausz and Sanderson recently announced they will not seek reelection; however, Wong declared his candidacy for a second term.

Before filing deadline, two candidates had already announced their intentions to run for a seat on the council: Salim Nice will run for Grausz’ seat and Joy Langley will campaign for one of the council seats as well. There are also two Mercer Island School Board positions set to expire this year, including the seats for Board members Dr. Adair Dingle and Dr. Dave Myerson. Dingle has not indicated whether she will seek reelection and Myerson said he will not run again.

Candidates have until 4 p.m. Friday to file online; mail filings will also be accepted through Friday.

Next week, we will announce which candidates are running for what seats so Island readers can stay on top of the local races. Reporter readers can also expect to see in-depth coverage of each of the candidates who file for the aforesaid races in the coming months. We will offer coverage of August’s primary election in June and July, if there are more than two candidates who file for a particular race. In addition, we will ask candidates’ tough questions for our coverage of November’s general election in September and October. If you have any questions that you would like the Reporter to ask any of the candidates, please email them to editor@mi-reporter.com.

To see candidates who have filed, click here.