| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| Josh Rosenau, Lake Forest Park City Council, position 3 |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| When Lake Forest Park was first announced in 1912, the brochure promised "This Park is not to be just a playground for the excessively rich; this Park is not to be a place where an half-hundred millionaires will exclude all others." As average home prices soar past $1 million, we are in danger of failing that promise. Our laws must allow more homes to be built in the same footprint that currently only gives housing to one family. Housing should go up rather than out, and allow smaller units inside the same space on a lot that currently can be made into a single home. By building that way, we can add more housing without undoing the urban forest that drew me and so many of my neighbors to choose this city. By adding more housing, and making at easy to build several small units as a single large house, we will make it easier for our children to move back as they graduate college, our elders to downsize without leaving their neighborhood and friends, and ensure that our schoolteachers and other essential service providers can afford to live in the community they serve. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| As we and other cities in the region add more housing, that will hold down the rapid growth of housing prices, and fewer people will become unhoused. We can borrow successful models from our neighbors to add incentives for affordable housing development in Lake Forest Park, and to create funding streams for development of new housing to support our neighbors in need. Through existing partnerships like NUHSA and other regional programs, we can increase the services available to people experiencing homelessness, and develop more options to house people and provide the stability and support they need. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| Lake Forest Park residents are rightly proud of our public safety services, and I'm proud to be endorsed by the Shoreline Firefighters union that protects our community. Our city's police force is widely regarded as a model of community policing and an example of how to serve a community as a partner in safety. I'm thrilled that our city can and does take steps to enhance public safety well before the criminal justice system becomes involved. For instance, we can be proud of, and look to expand, the Regional Crisis Response Agency (RCR), a partnership across cities that provides mental health professionals to respond to mental health crises without direct police involvement. This is a successful approach that is growing, thriving, and providing just and safe services to people in need. In that same vein, we should explore community courts and other diversion programs that have proven successful in neighboring cities. We can also continue to invest revenue from automated traffic cameras in engineering our roads to be safer for people and cars. By making physical changes to roads, we can change people's behavior before it creates a risk, rather than responding after a problem happened. We can accomplish that through the city's new Healthy Streets designation, the state's new shared streets law, and tools like speed bumps, roundabouts, modal filters that admit bikes, strollers, and walkers but not cars. When we take space from cars and slow them down, we enhance public safety and open space for community. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| RCR's mobile crisis response services show the power of regional collaborations to confront regional problems. Lake Forest Park should work with our partners to grow that program to a point where our police department has a RCR staffer on site covering every shift. Given our city's size, regional collaborations will be more efficient at providing many needed supports and services to people in need, and I'm proud to have been endorsed by mayors and other elected leaders across our neighboring cities. We share a duty to care for our most vulnerable neighbors, and by working together across the region, we can make sure no one falls through the cracks, and everyone receives the support they need. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| We should make it legal to create cafés or grocery stores in a garage or ADU. This will give our community members a chance to unleash their creativity, tie our communities closer together, provide essential services close to home, and build walkable neighborhoods. Making our neighborhoods more walkable will serve youth, elders, people with disabilities, and anyone else who cannot or does not drive. Much of the city is isolated from shopping and other services, including our parks and playgrounds, by busy highways and long distances over tall hills. Adding bike paths and walking routes safe from traffic will help those connections. Adding density and neighborhood retail in appropriate areas will also make it easier to bring back buses to neighborhoods that have lost service since the COVID-19 pandemic. We can also close the gaps between our neighborhoods and light rail, shopping, and rapid buses by expanding ebike infrastructure around new developments, increasing access to bike rentals, and exploring local shuttles or jitney services. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| Washington State's tax system is among the most regressive in the nation, forcing lower income residents to pay more than their share and exacerbating income inequality. While fundamental changes to that system will require state action, Lake Forest Park can make sure that the spending we control is directed in ways that provide the greatest benefits to those with the greatest needs, and that the benefits are fairly distributed across the city's neighborhoods. Where we can control fees and taxes, we should provide fair exemptions to reduce their burden on those with the least ability to pay, and use those fees to encourage equitable growth of the city. As an example, we could borrow a model from Kenmore, where an affordable housing fee is charged for developments which don't include affordable units. Exemptions exist for smaller, denser developments, and the highest fees are paid on McMansions. This generates revenue in progressive ways, incentivizes denser development to advance affordability, and directs spending to further benefit people who would otherwise be priced out of our community. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| On the city's Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, I have worked to engage a wider public in the city's planning. Too often, meetings in the evening at City Hall are inaccessible for working families who cannot break away from dinner and bedtime to take part in crucial conversations about the future of the city. On that board and as a council member, I will continue to bring those discussions to PTA meetings and dining room tables across the city, meeting people where they are to bring in new voices. I also support creating a participatory budgeting system in Lake Forest Park. The community would have opportunities to propose ideas that would improve the city, or just their neighborhood or the lives of some segment of the community. There would be community discussions about priorities and needs, and then the public could vote to select the projects that move forward. Programs like this elsewhere have engaged new voices, created innovative and successful programs, and ensured that everyone in the community is committed to the city's path forward. I look forward to seeing what the people of Lake Forest Park would create. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| Many of Lake Forest Park's earliest developments were built with racially-restrictive covenants attached to their deeds. These covenants limited access to the environmental benefits of a life in our community, and created a barrier to lake access, until the abolishment of those covenants in the 1960s. Environmental justice means confronting that ugly history and addressing the harm it has caused. That means building more housing to welcome people of diverse backgrounds and diverse incomes, in forms that serve the needs of all people. Environmental justice also means access to fast, efficient public transit, including closing the gap between neighborhoods and light rail or rapid buses on Bothell Way. Adding protected pedestrian infrastructure, allowing neighborhood cafes, and adding small parklets and play areas using existing rights of way or by narrowing roads will also enhance environmental justice, providing safety, income, and community in underserved areas. Taking bold action to stop climate change and provide resilience against climate chaos is also essential, and our city's bold climate action plan gives us a map of the steps necessary to protect everyone, especially the most vulnerable, from those risks. Hiring a city climate action manager would allow coordination of that work across the city's departments, and tap into new resources and solutions to advance our environmental and development goals. |
| Jon Lebo |
| No response |
| Josh Rosenau |
| Our communities on the north end of Lake Washington face shared challenges and have shown the power of collaboration to confront those challenges effectively. On the Lake Forest Park City Council I will strengthen regional partnerships and ensure that our city is an active and dedicated partner. We are stronger together. Our city is also stronger when we work together. On the council, I will push for more community spaces and more community services. By building community, we will build community consensus, and find new and creative ways to solve problems together, and build the bright future we all want and deserve. |