Like many other local incumbents on the November ballot, Kenmore City Councilman Allan Van Ness said he wants to stick around and bring projects he helped start to fruition.

“The job’s not done,” Van Ness said. “There are things on the horizon I want to see through.”

Talking about what is at least his second run for office, Van Ness’ challenger Patrick O’Brien quickly went on the offensive, taking on Van Ness and the current Kenmore Council on a couple of different fronts. His first point of attack was what he characterized as the current council’s back-door increases in surface-water management fees

“My agenda,” he said, “is for no new taxes. I will never vote for a new tax.”

“This is not something the council wanted to do, this is something we had to do,” Van Ness said of the increase in waste-water fees. He said the move was made in response to increased mandates in federal waste-water regulations, adding many cities were forced into similar increases. But O’Brien said the increases never should have been passed as a consent agenda item.

Generally, consent items are routine measures passed en masse by city councils, usually with little or no discussion.

“I know my opponent is saying we snuck it through,” Van Ness said, never denying the increases were passed as part of a consent agenda. But Van Ness did insist that prior to that vote, the city held several public hearings and offered plenty of opportunities for public comment.

Along with the allegedly secretive increases, O’Brien further said council is considering additional seemingly draconian waste-water measures that would, for example, prevent residents from washing their cars in their driveways or possibly using fertilizer on their lawns.

For his part, Van Ness said he doesn’t like the idea of those regulations any more than his opponent, wondering out loud what “car wash Nazis” would enforce a ban on washing cars in driveways. Still, Van Ness said the measures are again in direct response to beefed-up federal rules and that Kenmore is not alone is discussing such rules.

Kenmore’s new city hall was another target O’Brien mentioned early in his conversation. He said the issue should have been put to a public vote, and that at one point Van Ness promised it would go on the ballot.

“It (a new city hall) certainly isn’t the priority of the majority of the people I talk to,” O’Brien said.

Van Ness countered that he did not initially support the city hall project, calling for, as it did, a building five times the size of Kenmore’s current City Hall. He also railed against a $2 million underground parking garage, but said he was unable to convince the rest of council to abandon those plans.

In the end, Van Ness said he began to change his mind after the city hall project was essentially rebid. With the poor economy clearly playing a factor, the price tag dropped, according to Van Ness, from $15 million to $7.5 million.

“When all was said and done, the size was still too big and it still had structured parking, but the cost was half of what it was,” Van Ness said.

O’Brien also took aim at what he said was a clear lack of leadership and advocacy in the rebuilding of State Route 522. He said the current plans basically destroy what have been the street’s traditional access points, cutting off businesses and neighborhoods.

“It’s further isolating the north and south sides of Kenmore,” O’Brien said.

For the most part, Van Ness agreed with his opponent, at least in terms of a lack of access points. He said neither he nor the majority of the current council like the idea of medians preventing left-hand turns on a large stretch of the street. Instead, Van Ness advocates U-turn spots, as well as left-turn slots. He further noted that the road is a state route and therefore, Olympia, not Kenmore, has the final word on many infrastructure issues.

In other areas, O’Brien talked about maintaining St.Edward State Park in as pristine a state as possible. He said park facilities — presumably the former seminary on park grounds — could be rehabbed into a home for charitable organizations rather than for a commercial enterprise as was proposed in the past.

“I’m just excited about the city and I want to continue to be a part of what happens here,” Van Ness said.