Sternoff Running Again for City Council

Saying he wants to make Kirkland a better, more connected city that carefully spends its available revenues, Bob Sternoff announced Tuesday that he will seek re-election to the City Council position 2.

A resident of the Moss Bay Neighborhood and Kirkland resident for 30 years, Sternoff has served on the non-partisan council since 2005, when he took the seat of a councilmember who resigned.

“When I’m done with this, I want to know I left Kirkland a better place, and it was a great place when I got here,” he said. “We’re a great place with lots of great nooks and crannies, but there is still a need to be connected in a physical way.”

So far, no opponent to Sternoff has emerged. With his announcement, however, all three of the councilmembers up for re-election on Nov. 8 have indicated they will run again. Jessica Greenway announced in late April that she will run again for position 4. In early May, former state lawmaker Toby Nixon announced he would run against her. David Asher has not publicly announced he is running again for his current position 6 seat, but he has filed with the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Sternoff is a developer of commercial properties and custom homes who turns 57 in June. He chaired the council's annexation subcommittee, chairs its public safety committee and serves on its economic development committee.

The biggest challenges Sternoff sees ahead are connecting Kirkland's neighborhoods in sustainable ways, maintaining economic growth and revitalizing areas such as Totem Lake, and prioritizing budgets in an era of declining revenue.

He is an advocate for greater public participation in the budget process.
“The biggest challenge for all cities now is how we budget,” he said, asking rhetorically: “How do we prioritize how we spend the money we get and be prudent so that we have steady growth and predictability?”

He noted that the city prepares comprehensive plans for police and fire, public works and other city services, but perhaps not as well for budgeting.

“We need to engage the public and use some of the world-class minds we’ve got around here,” he said.

Novel approaches should be considered, he said. For example, a lid over Interstate 405 in the Totem Lake area, similar to what was done on Mercer Island with Interstate 90, could help connect neighborhoods and restore a vibrancy to the area.

Sternoff took the lead in pushing for a bill recently passed by the state Legislature that eliminated a costly requirement for a new census of annexation areas despite the availability of data from the 2010 federal census. It would have cost an estimated $200,000.

As for annexation, which takes effect at 12:01 a.m. June 1, he said the city's new residents will immediately see the benefits.

"The payback for residents in the annexation area is they get closer representation, plus economies of scale," he said. "Decision-making will be faster and more effective."

Before joining the council, Sternoff spent nine years on the city’s Parks Board. He is on the executive board of the Puget Regional Council, where he also serves on the Growth Management Policy Board and the newly formed Transportation Priority Work Group.

He is in his second term on the board of directors of the Suburban Cities Association, representing 37 cities comprising 950,000 residents. He is caucus chair for the Growth Management Planning Council for King County and is caucus vice chair to the King County Regional Transit Committee.

A graduate of the University of Washington in speech communications who grew up in Bellevue, Sternoff has two grown children. He is a private pilot and an avid motorcyle rider who owns a second home in Chelan.