The Kenmore Reporter newspaper conducted a Q&A with all the city council candidates for a story that ran in the newspaper published July19 . Here is the Q&A with Ken Smith in its entirety:

What do you see as the top three issues facing the city of Kenmore?

The top three issues where the city council should provide leadership are:

1. Providing clarity about the city’s current financial position, which is currently unclear.

I have heard many folks say “Kenmore is in a good financial position” – so I went to look for the audited financial statements to see for myself (they are at the atate auditor’s website). I think the real answer to the question “What is the city’s financial position?” is that “No one knows for sure.”

Since finance is a scary and complicated topic for most people, the use of analogy probably helps. The city of Kenmore essentially uses “checkbook” accounting – they keep track of their cash balance along with the cash that comes in and the cash that goes out. State law allows this method of accounting, but I don’t think Kenmore should use only this method because it does not give us the complete picture of all our assets and all our liabilities. It does not tell us where we really are, which should influence every decision we make about what the city does and how the city does it.

If the city were like any of our households, we would want to know the amount in the checkbook – but we would also want to know a lot more like the amounts due on the credit cards, the car loan and the mortgage. We would want to know the other assets we have, maybe we have an inheritance or some real estate up in the mountains or on the water. Perhaps most seriously we would want to know the expected costs in the near future, such as if the roof or furnace need to be replaced, or how much it will cost to send the kids to college.

The general fund budget for Kenmore is right around $10 million per year. The most recent newsletter states the 1930-era bridge over the Sammamish River will cost $20 million to $30 million to replace. The bridge cost is way too big to pay for without large grants or borrowing. My concern is we don’t know how many other real or potential liabilities like this bridge are out there. We may have some great unknown assets or resources as well. The point is we don’t have clarity.

The city council needs to promptly figure out its real financial position (not just the balance in the checkbook) in order to fulfill its duties to the residents of Kenmore. I believe this is the No. 1 issue facing the council and I would make it my top priority to get the clarity and share it with the rest of the Kenmore community.

2. Working with the community to create a clear and honest financial strategy.

This is complicated but important. It is very difficult to devise a clear and honest financial strategy. Over the 20-plus years of my professional career, I’ve seen business owners struggle with this, nonprofit leaders struggle with this and governmental entities struggle with this. Thus, this is not something that is fundamentally a Kenmore-only problem – it is a problem for all organizations.

Also, our current council and city staff have used many traditional tools in order to understand and operate the city’s finances. The city has its “checkbook accounting” audited by the state auditor and it prepares a 350-plus page budget document, which earns the prestigious Government Finance Officer’s Association award for “distinguished budget presentation.”

However, none of these tools allow you or me to easily understand the total amount that we give to the city, the benefits that we get from the city and the likely future amounts we will be paying and the benefits we will be receiving.

I make no promises that I will be able to help the city produce such clarity and honesty, but I will work hard to make progress. This is one of those areas where I think we should have big aspirations even though it is a huge challenge. Also, while I think this is important, I would balance my time on this issue with many others.

I choose the word “honest” on purpose. I know it is provocative, yet the issue of honest/dishonest government is one of the most common concerns I hear every day in my professional world and when talking with fellow Kenmore residents.

Bob Behn from Harvard has a nice one-page essay on “honest cheating” that we all can learn from. We need to have measures of how government performs but we need to be careful about how much pressure we use.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/thebehnreport/All%20Issues/August2011.pdf2.

3. Exploring a wide range of ideas on modern community economic development.

We need a broader dialogue. I think the council needs to provide leadership in leading a deeper discussion of how we want to live and grow together as a community – and the reasons for each option.

The current council meetings do not really facilitate dialogue with residents. I’m not a big fan of formality and distance and the council meetings I’ve attended feel less collegial than I expect in our community of about 20,000 residents. I’m a college professor and a certified public accountant so I can play power games if need be – and I also appreciate the need to prepare formal reports and abide by state laws – but we are a relatively small number of folks who can do so much better by truly listening and helping one another.

This is probably a “style” issue, but I’ve become very convinced that building consensus via a true dialogue is the best way for organizations to succeed. A true dialogue involves deeply understanding where everyone is coming from and being able to share that understanding back to the people with which you are having that dialogue. I will work within the existing structures to make our dialogues “feel” better, in Kenmore as a whole as well as via the council.

I have heard many people in Kenmore use the term “economic development,” yet I don’t think we are always talking about or thinking about the same things. I will propose several formats for ongoing dialogues about this term – about what it means to our wide range of residents – and to continually reach out to our newer residents, which are about 40 percent of the total residents since 2005.

In my limited part of this upcoming dialogue, I will suggest “economic development” should consider basic services, online “one-stop” government, electric intra-city shuttles and greener “E-tailing” rather than land intensive/parking lot intensive retailing. We can create a suburban community of the future. We seem focused (perhaps unintentionally) on repeating the sprawling/density strategies of the past.

How do you feel the city handled the acquisition and sale of the Kenmore Village property and what would you have done differently?

To begin, I don’t know enough of the details regarding how Kenmore Village was handled prior to 2012 to give my own opinion. What I understand is the city bought properties 10-plus years ago to “develop” them and they sit today “undeveloped.” On a pure results basis, this seems like a failure to achieve the goal in a timely fashion.

I have heard from several residents who believe many costly mistakes were made since the city purchased the properties. Of particular concern seems to be the interactions with developers from 2007 until recently.

Since there is so much anger and concern about the entire life of this real estate transaction, my proposal would be to have an independent party provide an overall assessment of the transaction. These assessments can be costly if not scoped carefully. I would seek to do something at low cost that nonetheless meets the government’s obligation to be accountable for its past actions, and an independent party may be needed to get a complete assessment.

I am more familiar with the steps the city has taken since 2012, after the city hired new City Manager Rob Karlinsey. Karlinsey is well-respected in the region and my interactions with him have been professional and positive. I certainly don’t agree 100 percent with everything that has been done, but my understanding is the steps since 2012 have been done in good faith with a high degree of professionalism.

As I noted in my citizen comments at the June 10 council meeting, I raised a handful of questions about the proposed sale and received prompt replies from the city manager, from Mayor Baker and from Councilman Brent Smith (no relation). I still have lingering unease about one part of the contract: it does not have a clause about when the development will begin. The city and the developers seem inclined to move at a prudent pace, but the absence of exact terms in the contract leaves the city at risk of having the property sit in its current state without being developed.

I’d be very careful and explicit in the terms in the contracts. Big deals require enormous care and clauses to protect the residents of our community. I’ve seen a lack of rigor in contracting since I began regularly attending council meetings on April 15 (examples include the incubator, the media relations contract and the proposed sale to the Benaroya group).

In both my professional career and my personal life, I’ve seen the negative results of imprecise contracts too many times. These create real pain and consequences and I will be more careful than the current council. (My testimony at council meetings is available at the city’s website, though it is hard to locate on the audio recording and only briefly or cryptically described in the minutes. I will post on my website soon.)

In your opinion, what is the best way to spur growth in the city and build a sense of community between businesses and the local government?

Growth is a potent and often poorly-defined term. The wording of this question assumes that everyone agrees that we should “spur” growth and that we all agree upon the kind of growth that we want to encourage to move faster. I’m skeptical that most Kenmore residents want a lot of growth or that they want us to grow faster. There are advantages and disadvantages of growth and I’m not sure we all understand those trade-offs.

There are also many alternatives for growth, where the formal activity and focus seems to be on the narrow band of land surrounding Bothell Way/State Route 522. I’m not sure we know why we want to grow, nor how those growth objectives might be better served by looking throughout the boundaries of the city.

Some of the ideas I’d like to see us talk about would not necessarily show up in the economist’s definition of  the gross domestic product, but I think they would make our community an even more attractive place to live, play and work.

A topic to discuss is no/low impact growth. By this I mean ideas like E-tailing and community tool sharing. E-tailing would boost gross domestic product and sales tax but require fewer parking lots and less carbon emissions from driving to other regional shopping areas.

From an economic strategy perspective, I’d like to draw from one of my favorite authors. I have kids in elementary and junior high, and though they also like him, he is one of my all-time favorites. Some know him as Theodor Geisel, though most know him by his middle name, Seuss, Dr. Seuss. When it comes to growth, I’m more like the Lorax than the Onceler – we can and should be responsible to the future while thriving in the present in Kenmore.

If you have an issue that is important to you please tell our readers about it and what you would like to do about it as a council member?

I really like ideas – but love great implementation. Implementation is difficult so we should always be cautious about critiquing those who have done the work. (Note: I serve on the editorial board for a few academic journals concerned with government accounting, finance and performance, and I also write articles for these journals. It is so much easier to critique than to write but both are essential and the criticisms are not aimed at hurting the person or their ideas. The criticisms are aimed at making the paper better. My criticisms of the city are likewise aimed at making things better and not intended to harm or embarrass those who boldly put forth ideas, efforts and activities to make things better.)

The city has recently promoted ideas of economic development, particularly the idea of economic gardening. At the idea level, this makes a lot of sense to me and I support a broad community discussion of it. We are bright and resourceful. I am confident we will figure out a great approach.

However, I think the implementation of some of the economic development activities are not at the level that we should expect given the level of investment the city has made. One specific item, the Kenmore business incubator, appears to me to be an example of a good idea with poor implementation.

The council authorized $238,000 for a “pilot” of the incubator. The original estimate was $50,000, which sounds like a hefty but perhaps reasonable amount for a “pilot.” I do not think that almost a quarter of a million dollars qualifies as a pilot; to me it is a major investment that deserves scrutiny and adequate resources as well as routine monitoring/oversight.

I have asked for and have yet to see a formal business plan for the incubator. To me, there is a mismatch here and it should be fixed as soon as possible.

If I were a member of council, I would be very diligent in reviewing contracts, I would ask precise questions to help ensure benefits would be realized and costs would be minimized, and I would formally request a reporting/update mechanism on all projects that are new, risky or large financial investments.

This is what every steward or trustee should do and I do criticize the current council for being lax in this specific area of their diligence in contracting and oversight. Hopefully this criticism will lead to a better result (as it is intended) rather than feelings of personal attack (which is not intended).

I will always ask:

A) How much does it cost?

B) What do we reasonably expect to benefit?

C) How else could we get this done/who else does it better?

What is your campaign website address for residents to learn more about you?

My plan is to work towards making Kenmore a better community. I have not created a formal campaign staff and have not yet raised any money. I am building my website by myself and it is not yet live, though I hope it will be live soon and provide a useful window into how I view the city council and how I would serve the citizens if they were to elect me to represent them. For information, visit www.ken4kenmore.com