Seattle City Council wannabes will have to stick to the basics

Here come the snow candidates.

If you thought the December snowstorms were hard to deal with, wait until you hear the squawking about them in upcoming Seattle City Council and mayoral elections. For the next few months, incumbents and challengers will hark back to who failed to do what, when, and Can we please get some ice-busting salt in storage for next time?

New Year. New political season. Big potential for considerable change on the City Council. A little less so in the mayor's office.

The snowstorms, and the city's pathetic response to them, put the exclamation point on the fact that we need practical pols on the council. Not Joe the Plumber. We all understand the foibles of rank inexperience. But candidates who insist on making the city work.

The city is expected to deliver basic services — read, reasonable snow removal and garbage collection — and not be too cavalier about people's time and inconvenience. That old line about the weather — everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it — could become a campaign slogan.

Most citizens don't pay much attention to the goings on at City Hall, unless you trap them in their homes with really bad snow cleanup for 10 days and then ask what they think.

For days and days, key arterials in and out of downtown, and parts of important downtown streets, remained unplowed, unsalted or packed down by snow equipment that doesn't work well. Policies must be reviewed. The council has meetings scheduled next week to review salt use, snowplow use and which arterials must be cleared.

If all three council members expected to leave the council do so, three open seats would present a big opportunity for change. It's not often that three openings occur at the same time.

So far, only one council member has officially decided not to seek re-election, Richard McIver. But Jan Drago and Nick Licata also are expected to move on.

The council and its customers, the citizens of Seattle, will be looking for newcomers with practical, common-sense approaches to basics, like snowstorms. The council needs individuals who understand problems of retailers at Christmastime, who think about people and fish, in that order, at the height of a blizzard.

No council member is directly responsible for city policy against use of salt on roadways and snowplows with rubber edges that don't really remove snow, but everyone will have an opinion about it. Expect this to be an issue at least early in campaigns taking shape the next few months. The city response to the storms speaks to a larger issue: Citizens want basics done properly first, before frills.

For Mayor Greg Nickels, who reversed course on the no-salt policy Wednesday, the lame street clearing of December will be a major unpleasantness in his re-election bid, but the topic stops short of a World Trade Organization moment, the kind that did in former Mayor Paul Schell. Then, the city was all broken glass and tear gas. This political moment is a city backed up with weeks-old garbage strewed about, package delivery at a standstill and too many inaccessible roadways. Claustrophobia on Ice.

Nickels and his transportation department had an abysmal performance, but the mayor reasonably agreed to immediately review the policy and change it.

The most flawed politicians never admit a mistake. Nickels foolishly gave his transportation department a B grade, which everyone knows is a lot worse. But for Nickels, so far, so good, because few strong candidates dare to stick their heads up and say they are running. The only name I keep hearing belongs to greenish developer Greg Smith.

Licata hasn't decided if he will seek re-election or run for mayor. Licata is one of the most lefty members of the council, so he doesn't present the kind of threat that would really challenge Nickels, someone from the moderate middle.

A list of council wannabes is taking shape for November 2009. Former Seattle SuperSonics center James Donaldson, Sally Bagshaw, who has worked for the King County Prosecutor's Office, Jordan Royer, the former mayor's son, and perhaps Robert Rosencrantz, who has run several times.

It is no mistake that one of the most admired new council members is Tim Burgess, former cop who has worked in marketing for nonprofits. He is described by insiders as full of dignity, integrity and a sense of let's-get-it-done without much ego.

Burgess, elected in 2007, provides a template for the next round of challengers. Stick to common-sense approaches to problems, and always, always, deliver basic services.

Joni Balter's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is jbalter@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera