Council Feature: Karen Guzak

First elected to City Council in 2007 and serving as Mayor from 2010-17, Councilmember Karen Guzak has served the City for more than 13 years. As Mayor Linda Redmon provides a look to the future, we sat down with Councilmember Guzak to provide some perspective on how far the City has come.

You’ve seen a lot of changes during your time serving the City. What are some of the accomplishments you are most proud of?

I think we accomplished a lot over those many years under the former Council/Manager government. One of our early decisions, based on our Strategic Planning process, was to hire the City’s first Economic Development Director. That position has been critical in how we created a more stable sales tax base, and more community vitality as we partnered with other organizations, such as the Historic Downtown Snohomish Association.

Another thoughtful and proactive action we took was to create a Transportation Benefit District. The voter-approved increase in sales tax has helped fund many important transportation projects, including the Avenue D roundabout. It’s also helped with preservation and renovation of our City streets. The TBD dollars are a powerful match of federal and state dollars that have helped pay for many

of our larger projects, and will continue to help us in our ongoing list of needed street improvements. We also were able to reduce sewer and water rates. A major effort was the work done to improve our wastewater treatment. At the time, we were dealing with sewage and wastewater spillages into the Snohomish River, but replacing the entire treatment plant would have been too costly. City staff came forward with a new idea: we worked with the Department of Ecology and created “bacteria hotels” in our sewage treatment lagoons. Not only did this approach save money (reducing rates I am very supportive of our expenditures for for residents) and reduce spillage, our Wastewater Treatment Plant has been recognized by the state for outstanding the future of the city, which will improve our performance. I’m also proud of the cooperative action we took with the Tulalip Tribes quality of life. to remove the Pilchuck River Dam for salmon restoration. This enabled us to decommission our old and outdated water treatment plant and transition to much less expensive quality water as part of Everett’s Spada Lake system.

Where do we go from here?

I am very enthusiastic about this carefully crafted biennial budget, and very supportive of our expenditures for the future of the city, which will improve our quality of life. I have a high degree of confidence in Linda (Redmon) as our Mayor and CEO and staff leadership at the city. This team, along with Council, is the highest quality I’ve seen in my many years. Our City is working well and we have enough revenue to do the necessary projects to restore and improve infrastructure. I am grateful for these halcyon days, and all the work of so many that brings us to this positive place today.

> edwardjones.com | Member SIPC

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