First of all, I want to welcome you to my page! I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the enthusiasm and support for my campaign. This is going to be an exciting election season and I am so thankful you decided to join me on the journey.
One of my primary goals for this campaign is to encourage citizen engagement with myself and my fellow candidates. I would like to see the community come together with a common objective of high voter turnout and an informed vote in November. In order to accomplish that goal, I solicited questions from the community on our infamous, DCDB facebook group (Duvall Community Discussion Board). The DCDB never shies away from controversial subjects and I was hoping to get a full range of questions from a diverse group of residents. I have included the list of questions below. My plan is to work through answering these questions in the coming months. Please reply or message me with additional questions if you see a topic of concern missing from the list below. I will update this post as new questions are received!
Two questions: 1) With the sudden growth that Duvall is experiencing, what is the plan for improving the infrastructure (water, sewer, etc…) to support this growth? 2) What incentives is Duvall considering to entice new business to the community? (Jack Ballard)
Can you get a hold of the chart City Council showed last week about how there isn’t sudden or unusual growth but how it’s actually slower than the 80s and I think one other time in Duvall’s history? (Jennifer Martin)
Cherry Creek Falls trailhead……… (Rita Winters)
On the subject of growth and infrastructure, how will we pay for this? I’m in favor of taxes/fees, etc on the developers and homeowners to pay for their own sewer access, water supply, etc. Your thoughts? (Kevin Bail)
My question is a little more open ended, but I’d like to get a better view (pie chart comes to mind) on how the City’s tax revenue is generated. How much is derived from new construction vs. annual fees etc. My real question/concern is this: Is the city relying too heavily on fees/taxes collected from new housing and construction to fund the ongoing operation of the city? Stated another way: Is Duvall relying too much on growth to pay for itself? (Mike Jacob)
This concerns me, too. I realize that taxes have gone up, but they may not have increased enough to support our infrastructure–Police, fire, etc. (Fred Pullen)
Can you commit that you will not support any tax increase on our already burden community members? (Jamie Kemper)
Can you think of a time in public office that you made a mistake or regretted a decision? What was that decision if any, and what would you do differently moving forward? (Jack Gorbett)
How do you feel about the few historic buildings that are still left in town? Do you want to save them or sell them to finance a new city hall? (Judi Randall Chapman)
My questions would be why are you running and what do you think are the three top issues and what are your priorities for the budget? (Eric Benjamin)
What is the biggest issue that prompted you to run? (Amy Fudally)
What are two areas that are funded publicly that YOU BELIEVE should be funded privately? (Matt Loud)
How is the city going to work with the school district to locate adequate land needed to expand the High School and/or build a middle school in the distant future? Thanks to King Co rules 20 acres within the city limits is needed from what I understand to build a new school. (Kathleen M B Norris)
Along the same lines as Jack Ballard…with the growth, how are we going to improve upon the roads? Routes in and out of Duvall already seem to be stressed. Is there any planning for improvement? I’m for growth but are we planning for that growth? (Vickie Meneghini Skinner)
When we moved to Duvall, 12 years ago, the population was around 2000. 12 years later, we are around 8000. The schools at the time were already dealing with large class sizes for the space and teachers, and it has grown considerably since then. With all this new growth projected, what is being discussed regarding more schools, such as the middle/high schools being used for 2 towns? (I do not know the population stats for Carnation, but I assume they have grown as well.) (Sarah Fisher)
Jennifer4Duvall 