Good government in my estimation is government that addresses the needs all segments of society.

Please see the answer to Question #6 for this response.

It is my sincere belief that it is usually a small percentage of the population that lives an entire lifetime in abject poverty or troubling circumstance and we a societal mandate to help those folks at every opportunity through our governments and our private sector. Then there is a certain group who are temporarily down on their luck, although temporary can last quite a while sometimes. It is with the latter group that the Port can have the greatest impact by fostering the growth of more and larger local businesses where dollars are earned here and spent here. The more diverse our economy is the more likely that a person needing a job will find one.

Through economic development and resulting improvement in available job opportunities and living wage earnings, households can become economically self-sufficient as they were in Bellingham's past when there were many natural resource based employers successfully operating in our community and few aid agencies existed.

I spent 5 years working directly with families as they made the transition from public assistance to self-sufficiency. My experience has shown that people move themselves out of poverty and achieve self-sufficiency through meaningful employment and advancements at work. Generally, people who are living in poverty are unemployed or are in minimum wage jobs with little prospect for growth or advancement.

I understand that there are often many obstacles to overcome before working can become a reality for some people. Homelessness, single parenting, substance abuse, incarceration, untreated medical needs, little or no education, domestic violence, and hunger are but some of the issues that can prevent success at work.

I believe that government's role is to set policies that promote a robust economy so that there are good paying jobs available and to provide support services that remove the obstacles to working. I am also very supportive of higher education as a means to move people out of poverty.

The concept of ending homelessness is something our community should strive towards. We need to recognize that the cost to the community is greater when we have significant populations that simply cannot become self sufficient due to the impediments they confront in meeting basic housing, health and food needs. We all needed some help, at one time or another, to become self sufficient. As a society we should be willing to extend some help to others even if it means that some need more help than we did because of their particular circumstances or abilities. How well we help those in need is a measure of the strength of our community. Local government needs to establish a floor of support for those that need it with as much self efficiency as possible. In the long run this approach should provide cost savings.

Candidate did not provide a response by the deadline.

I have always felt that people who are most in need have had a lifetime of barriers and challenges put in the way. The government's job is not to care for those people forever, but to help them realize their potential by providing a foundation for success. The most important things are hope and opportunity. Some people go their whole lives without either, and that is a tragedy! As long as those two factors exist, our fellow citizens will be able to build a better life for themselves.

We need to always make decisions, particularly in the land use context, considering the impact on employment opportunities. Not just simply assigning commercial or industrial zoning, but transportation is also a very big factor. We cannot look at issues with a narrow view, as one decision can easily have unintended consequences in other ways. I am very conscious of the fact that many in our community are struggling today, particularly in this economy.

Much of the effort to break the cycle of poverty falls on the federal and state governments, and the entities they fund. While I would love for the County to be more involved in these issues, we lack the funding sources necessary to play a much larger role. As mentioned in answers to other questions the County does have an important role to play to work with other local entities in providing a basic safety net to ensure people in our community have access to health care, emergency and affordable housing, and food. At current levels of funding most of these are stopgap measures, which will only work to move people toward self-sufficiency if other state and federal programs and private sources of assistance are applied as well.

Local elected officials need to try to do what they can as outlined in some of these other questions, and also need to weigh all policy decisions to ensure we are not creating unintended consequences that make things worse. Elected officials are also the voice of the people and we should use that voice over and over again to make sure people understand that as long as people go to bed hungry, or are forced to sleep in their cars or under bridges, or lose their life savings or even their lives because of lack of health care, those are all signs of a dysfunctional society in serious need of change.

For job growth, we must have a community that does not over-tax and over-regulate its businesses, causing them to move away, because they will. We need to embrace entrepreneurs willing to bring jobs into our community. My multi-location business experience has taught me that it can work. When business is good, good people are needed. I don't think the current Council is doing enough to incentivize new business growth -- or to even save existing ones. I have worked with people of all ages and backgrounds. People should be able find work that can suit them, and business growth will provide that.

Government can assist people by helping them stabilize their lives (help citizens get stable housing, access to food, address health or safety issues, and educate or train them for work). One example of how government can enhance people's lives, was last year when the county council passed the sales tax increase to enhance our mental and behavioral health services in our community. If we provide options for people to help themselves, then we will be meeting the needs for our citizens. Another example of this philosophy is my strong support for wanting the East County Community Resource Center built...the Columbia Valley has approximately 4,000 people living out there with very little services available to them. The county has been working on securing funding to get this center built. The Opportunity Council will be a major tenant there, and they will offer a Head Start program for children, and we will also have a food bank, as well as services for seniors. It's badly needed and will greatly enhance the lives of many, and it's a personal goal of mine to see this project through. These are two examples of how government can provide opportunities for people the assist them with pathways to improve their lives, and eventually when folks get strong enough, I believe they will turn into contributors vs. users. My favorite quote is from the late great Senator Wellstone, "We all do better, when we all do better."

We were late to the meltdown and we may be late to the recovery, We need to make sure that we not only help create jobs but we need to help the businesses that we have now get through this recession. This has been the worse economic downturn in the 16 years I have been on the council. We have had to make some layoffs at city hall where we have the best employees in the world. Our budget should not be balanced on the back of our employees and we have to make Bellingham business friendly again so we can help create the needed jobs we need. Also the waterfront project has the chance to really help Bellingham boom again.

I don't believe it's local governments sole responsibility to provide over arching care for our citizens. We need to keep people safe and to assist local agencies with progressive policy, and funding, to assist in providing services. To meet those goals we support agencies including the local food bank, the housing authority, the Opportunity Council, the Kulshan Land Trust, and a wide variety of local health care agencies as they meet their missions to assist our citizens in need with a wide range of services.

In looking at the issue of poverty in our community we must understand both the local as well as state and federal situation. Some of the contributing factors include; the reduction in the number of unions and living-wage jobs, concentration of low paying jobs in retail and service sector, single parent homes with only one wage earner. Bellingham is not unique in facing this problem. As our state and country lost jobs in manufacturing and industry we moved into retail and service oriented market which focused on lower pay. In the 1990's the most important statistic regarding how people were doing was the increase in the minimum wage and the earned income credit. Some communities around the country and now looking at moving the minimum wage standard to a living wage requirement. Washington State has been in the forefront of the minimum wage standard and leads the nation in setting that amount.

However, lack of manufacturing and industry jobs here in Washington/Bellingham continues to contribute to our inability to move people out of poverty. Women who are single head of households face the extra burden of earning enough to raise their dependent children out of poverty. The risk women face of helping non-working dependents are not shared by society. The result is that female headed households, faced with the significant earnings gap between men and women have a poverty rate of 31.1% compared to 13.4% for male-headed households and an overall gap of only 10.4% for the general population.

The solution is begins with job diversity. Our community needs a range of employment that includes retail, manufacturing, service, government, education and health care. The key is a balance so that the majority of employment is not in the retail and service jobs which pay minimum wage. Of course, this must be supported by adequate training which can be provided by educational/training programs such as Bellingham Technical College, Whatcom Community College, Western Washington University and our Public School Systems. State support for programs such as Job Corps which is a program supported by the Department of Labor provides training, education and dormitory accommodations is a great way to serve youth which need extra support in our community.

Our community can set policy and lead this process through possible living wage requirements, job and economic development, local jobs program focused on what we need to accomplish in our community, working with the public school system to provide public-private partnerships, supporting the organizations already doing this work in our community such as Worksource Whatcom, Whatcom Community College Transitions program supporting non-traditional training for women and providing adequate support for working families with children.

I firmly believe that people deserve equality of opportunity, because opportunity can build self-sufficiency. I spent my teen years in a single-mom household, with some public assistance for a few of those lean years. Assistance enabled my mom to complete her education and go on to establish a professional career as a psychologist. From my own experience, I know public assistance works.

At the same time, we need to appreciate that there is a kind of division of labor among governments, with county, state and federal agencies playing different roles than that of the city. Compared to these other level of government, our city funding sources are limited, and so our goals should reflect a more targeted and local approach. If we spread our resources too thinly, we may not be as effective. We may need to prioritize those applications that will produce more tangible results in terms of employment, skill-building, and especially stable housing, because preventing problems can be a better path than treating them.

I believe government in general has a responsibility to help families move out of poverty and achieve self sufficiency. Of course by what means and to what extent is a difficult question to answer both philosophically and politically. Being economically self-sufficient means that a low income household has sufficient means to provide for themselves. If they are "self-sufficient" then, presumably, they won't be receiving direct forms of assistant. If these are the facts I am to assume from the question then it follows that local government can help by supporting policies that reduce the cost of living thus making it more affordable to live on less income. Toward that end, local government can ensure that zoning is established that permits and promotes a range of housing types including those that are built and sold for less as per the CHAT recommendations discussed above.

JOBS. The City of Bellingham needs to support the business community in providing opportunities for employment. Rather than placing road blocks in the way of business the attitude should be one of helpfulness.