Candidate Profile: Janet Richards For Redmond Council, Pos. 2

REDMOND, WA — General election ballots will land in mailboxes across King County by Oct. 18, as the 2021 election season enters its final stretch heading into Nov. 2. Dozens of key races are in play this year, including contests for King County Executive, four positions on the Metropolitan King County Council and several local city council races.

As voters prepare to fill out their choices, Patch asked candidates to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles leading up to Election Day.

Janet Richards is running for Position 2 on the Redmond City Council and, if elected, would be its first Black member. Richards is also a mother and a small business owner with 25 years of corporate experience.

Candidate

Janet Richards

Age (as of Election Day)

52

Position Sought

Redmond City Council Position 2

Party Affiliation

None

Family

Colin, Husband. Janeen (she/her), 22. Jason (he/him), 20. Jada (she/her), 14. Fur babies: Winter & Frodo

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

BA, Ambassador University

Occupation

Program/Project Management - over 20 years

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

No

Campaign website

janet4redmond.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

Redmond is transforming rapidly. We reflect many of the challenges in the region, such has lack of housing (affordable and otherwise), strained infrastructure due to growth, and under protecting environment. We have some great opportunities as well, in that we are increasing our diversity, experiencing job growth through our competitive local companies, and creating a revolutionary new transportation model with light rail. I want to be a part of the governance in how manage these challenges and opportunities with a focus on increasing a diverse, equitable and inclusive approach. I believe this is essential for the future success of Redmond and our region.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Transforming, rapidly and cohesively, for the challenges ahead (climate change, income disparity, and rapid growth). As our city diversifies and grows, we need new ways of engaging the community and reaching decisions that work for everyone. A recent issue, the Silver Cloud Hotel purchase, emphasizes that we are not in alignment as a community and need to have better ways to inform and include the broader community in government decisions. Not every decision necessary will be popular, but we must improve how we engage the broad community to progress and solve our complex challenges.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I bring a voice that has never had representation on city council. The most obvious is my ethnicity, I would be the first black person on Redmond city council. What I believe is more important is my life experiences. I have worked over 25 years in a successful corporate career. I am a small business owner (consulting company). I am also a mother of three, and one has had several medical challenges. We have struggled to find housing and employment through several medical crisis, and emerged to contribute actively in the community. I bring this perspective to Council.

When Mitzi Johanknecht leaves office, what should the county look for in appointing a new sheriff?

We need a leader committed to continued public safety, transparency to gain the trust of the diverse community, and works proactively with each city's law enforcement organization for the county wide support necessary. Specifically, as a member of a BIPOC community, we need to know the KC sherrif is as interested in our public safety needs, which includes not experiencing disparties in our law enforecment encounters.

What are some of your priorities for a post-pandemic recovery?

Restoring the small business community is a priority of mine. There are several components of this that I am focused on. One of them is ensuring we continue the progress in vaccinations to safely resume gathering and consuming, so that customers feel safe to return. Secondly, our workforce challenges impact everyone, including small business. We need to help people be able to return to work. We need to strategically use our human services and resources to allow people impacted by Covid restrictions to return to work. Another area of focus is members of the community who have been isolated and are experiencing unprecedented mental health impact. We need to resume community gatherings and events, provided mental health care through our human services budget, and ensure our public safety programs provide the best resources for a community recovering from a traumatic event.

What would you do in office to strengthen preparedness and response efforts for extreme heat and wildfire smoke events?

I would ensure we proactively educate and prepare our community to operate safely. We need to limit the start of preventable fires. We also need to think about the staffing of our public safety resources, including fire departments, as shifting in the future as our climate challenges increase. As a longer-term strategy, our affordable housing issues also impact our ability to have fire fighters live locally and in our community. We need to increase the diversity of our housing options so that when we do have environmental events and fires, we have local resources. Lastly, this is a human influenced challenge we are facing. As a council member, I am responsibility to improving our local policies to reverse our negative impact on the climate.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

Our elected city leadership team is overwhelmingly progressive. That should have meant for alignment and rapid progression in several areas. Yet, in session, too often they have behaved as if they are on opposite sides and do not share similar goals. I would like to see a city council focused more on acting on the goals we share, versus getting stuck on tactics and who gets credit for how they achieve the goals. This is a commitment of mine. I will work with all council members to achieve the goals we have in common. I joined in the race because we need more cooperation and action to keep pace with the rapid changes our community is experiencing.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

Overall, I am proud of my city's response. We saw a lot of early and innovative action like distribution of PPE resources and working with many partners to ensure the vaccine was available. As a member of the Human Services Commission, we worked very hard and with the city council to use the extra federal funding quickly and efficiently for our most urgent needs. My main area of improvement would be the need for proactive and visible cooperative communication from the city leadership team. We have such tremendous technology available to us, and we need to find more innovative ways to keep the community at large informed. This is also a good opportunity to learn ways to keep community members engaged who cannot attend in-person meetings.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

You touched on one of my main issues, recovering from Covid at all levels including in small business, families, seniors, communities, financially, and tourism. I am focused on how we prepare for light-rail and all it will impact. I am concerned as a community we are not prepared for how that will transform everything from our experiences with public safety to leveraging the transportation options we will have to improve our use of fossil fuels as a community. For example, how do we simplify access to our large communities to bike, shuttle, or drive & park to use light rail. Lastly, we need to act on preserving our environment in a measurable way. Our progress is too slow. As a city, we can lead in taking local action more proactively than we have.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

After experiencing years of a critical health situation with my son, I engaged at Seattle Children's hospital to address many of the challenges we faced during our years in the hospitals OR and critical care units. I joined the Family Advisory Council (FAC), eventually became Chair of the council. Recently, I joined an active team addressing long standing concerns of the Odessa Brown community that their treatment was impacted by the biases toward black patients and families. I am on a team addressing 4 specific areas of disparate treatment. Lastly, I was selected as a non-hospital employee to work on addressing disparities in police calls on black families and joined the newly formed Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Council as a decision maker on addressing EDI concerns at the hospital. I have moved from mom to a recognized leader in crafting new policies that impact the lives of diverse patients and families. As chair of the FAC, I worked hard to increase the diversity of the membership to look more like the hospital's community. We made measurable strides in membership, inclusion, overall strategic function, and influence. I have demonstrated, as a volunteer as this was not a paid role, that I can provide leadership that produces measurable system-wide positive outcomes.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

Take time to rest. Dr Karen Johnson, WA State Director of Equity, just told me last week when I met with her to Rest, and read. Specifically, she gave me a couple of books on John Lewis and Martin Luther King Jr, as well as the speeches of MLK Jr. to read while resting. In order to be the agent of change I intend to be, she's right. I need to take time to rest, focus, learn and come back ready to continue the legacy I want to leave in the Redmond community.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

Redmond thrives when everyone thrives isn't just a slogan or saying. It is words I developed in my journal while deciding to join in on the race. I do not believe we inherently have a system or society of winners and losers. I believe we tell ourselves that as a lazy way to not push for better solutions. I bring this philosophy with me into all I do and will bring it into City Council. I can and do make hard decisions, but I do my very best to find solutions that work for everyone.

I also love to knit, just learned how to paint with watercolors (my covid hobby), read all kinds of books (SciFi/Fantasy is my guilty pleasure), host game nights with my diverse community, and take long walks with my dog.