This was an epic election for Mercer Island. It’s remarkable that four challenger candidates were willing to sacrifice significant careers, key family time, and personal lives, for many months, to seriously confront the profoundly troubling direction the incumbent Council has been taking. The Council’s faulty policies for GMA, density, growth, and transportation, were each serious and compelling threats.

It’s also pertinent that nearly half the voters clearly recognized the Council’s serious process and policy problems, so as to support the challengers. It even took the incumbents to flip-flop positions, falsely claiming credit for things that others did, and mirroring the challengers key platform points, to try to save their own incumbent seats.

Even as you read this, new surprises may still be developing, about how our present Council potentially knew, but didn’t disclose, recent key pre-election developments regarding Mercerdale and a wetland unfavorable legal opinion reference park use. That information too, could have had a substantial election effect. The Council’s chronic poor behavior, spurring lawsuits, lack of transparency, and faulty processes, while stiff-arming full disclosure, if not even using process tricks to suppress effective wide citizen awareness and input (e.g., preventing advisory votes, passing the TBD without a vote) remains abhorrent.

There now has to be a better way. Our Council needs to seriously elicit input from all the citizens of this Island. It is not acceptable to primarily pursue their own personal agendas, or those of special interests, or to put “regional” interests first. At least half of the voters recognize our Council remains at odds with the views of an important major segment of our community.

So let’s now band together to help the Council see a better way to change their present course. There are limits to growth. We finally need to properly deal with GMA, transit density, high-rise zoning, flawed bus transit intercepts, loss of HOV/SOV lanes, inappropriate off-island use of MI P&R parking, excessive crime, emergency preparedness, addressing short platting, keeping key service businesses on the island, assuring adequate (not just token) impact fees for infrastructure, parks, fire, GMA administrative overhead and school support, as well as precluding threats to our parks. Each are arguably destructive to our Island community’s family and residential oriented future, and our very own peaceful and tranquil way of life.

To my supporters, I offer my profound thanks.  You’ve made a difference.

Salim Nice