After earning a doctorate in education and spending roughly three decades as a teacher, topping off your career with seven years as a high-school principal, what do you do for an encore?
How about help establish a city?
Kenmore’s second mayor, Dick Taylor, 84, and several others were the driving forces behind the incorporation of Kenmore in 1998. That was well over a decade after Taylor retired from his teaching career with the Seattle schools in 1981.
The Kenmore Heritage Society will recognize Taylor’s contributions to the city with the awarding of the ninth annual McMaster Heritage Award to be presented Feb. 3 at the Kenmore Community Club. Last year’s winner, Dave Maehren, will present the honor to Taylor.
Maehren noted that he first met Taylor when the two served together on the committee that eventually led Kenmore to incorporation.
“He’s really a very positive, always up-beat kind of a guy,” Maehren added. “That quality really helped coalesce the group, so he was integral in that way.”
Moving from Seattle, Taylor arrived in Kenmore with his wife, Eleanor, and their family in 1973. (Incidentally, Taylor said, born in Spokane, he grew up about a block away from his wife of 60 years.) Taylor added the push to incorporate Kenmore rose out of a desire for self-governance.
“I think the basic issue was, we wanted to have local control,” he said.
At the same time, Taylor added that King County was pushing for the creation of new cities or the annexation of its unincorporated areas by existing municipalities. According to Taylor, both Bothell and Lake Forest Park passed on annexing Kenmore. Each wanted only a slice of the community.
After helping lead the incorporation effort, Taylor was elected to Kenmore’s first City Council in 1998. The council chose him as mayor in 2000, a position he held for two years. Taylor served on council for almost six years.
Aside from helping to establish the city, Taylor said he is most proud of what he feels was the sound financial footing on which Kenmore was launched.
“We were able to make some money and to save some money,” Taylor commented.
He also talked about setting up city services, arguing those services are the first job of any city.
As an example of how local control benefitted the area, Taylor said Kenmore’s early leaders were able to take on street and road projects that he contends King County never would have gotten around to doing.
“It might not sound all that flashy,” Taylor said, but he added road work was among the sort of everyday municipal projects that the then-new city was able to complete.
Taylor and his wife now make their home in Edmonds, enjoying what he said is the ability of residents in that city to get around without driving. He said, that, unfortunately, that ability doesn’t exist as much in Kenmore. Overall, though, Taylor likes the way the city has progressed and where it is going.
For starters, Taylor believes the planned Kenmore Village development will eventually happen, putting a mix of new retail and residential space in the area of the old Kenmore City Hall.
Taylor served on the advisory committee that came up with the LakePointe proposal, but he isn’t as optimistic about those plans coming to fruition.
LakePointe would put homes and retail — possibly even a movie theater — on the shores of Lake Washington.
Even though his college degrees are in philosophy and education, Taylor describes himself as a big science enthusiast. He currently is trying to relearn calculus and builds his own computers.
“It’s kind of fun, you can upgrade so cheaply,” he said.
Taylor is also a studied photographer. One picture he seems especially proud of is an artistic shot of the Great Wall of China. Taylor and his wife have spent plenty of time traveling with an alumni group from the University of Washington.
As for the award from the Heritage Society, it means a lot to him.
“It’s your peers recognizing you… I think it’s just a great honor.”
