This year’s election season is all about local, nonpartisan races—from City Councils to School Boards to Fire, Park, Hospital, and Water Districts. In other words, the outcomes of these elections will absolutely touch your life over the next few years.
Even though elected boards have a higher daily impact on our lives, the elections for them typically have the smallest voter turn out. Your vote matters and will impact your taxes, fees, and more!
Special districts, school boards, city councils are also not well understood and most come with very small (if any) monetary reimbursement. Residents who offer to serve on these boards do so out of their commitment to their communities. They are asking you to give them a job by electing them to office. The Kittitas League wants you to get to know more about these non-partisan positions and those residents running to fill them, so we invited them to sit down for a candidate job interview. We invited all the candidates in 15 contested races to join us in Zoom.
2023 Candidate Interviews go Live October 16!
Visit our YouTube Channel to watch the interviews!
So far these candidates have agreed to be interviewed:
- Cle Elum/Roslyn School District Position At-Large #2: Rob Iverson and Monica Oertli Medalen
- City of Cle Elum Mayor: Mathew Lundh and Kerry Clark
- City of Cle Elum City Council, Position 2: Ken Ratliff
- City of Ellensburg City Council, Position 4: Joshua Thompson and write-in candidate Steve Verhey
- City of Kittitas City Council, Position 3: Jerry Lael
- City of Roslyn City Council, Position 4: Cathy Cook
- Ellensburg School District, Position 2: Cathie Day
- Fire District 7, Commissioner 2: Jeff Myers and Bill Dickinson
- Fire District 2, Commissioner 5: Neal Houser
- Hospital District 1, Commissioner 4: Jason Badgerow and Jon Ward
- Parks & Recreation District 1, Commissioner 1: Lucy Temple and Susie Weis
- Parks & Recreation District 1, Commissioner 5: Keegan Fengler and Jennifer Hyatt
Races with no response or candidate declined, are:
- City of Cle Elum City Council, Position 7
- City of South Cle Elum Town Council, Position 4
- Water District 3, Commissioner 1
We would really like voters to get a chance to see all of the candidates in these races, so if you are running for one of the contested seats listed above and missed our email, phone, or snail mail invitations, please contact us at:
- Email: kbsmgb@gmail.com or info@kittitasleague.org
- Phone: 360-921-0819
We put together a YouTube playlist for each race which includes an introductory explainer outlining the duties and responsibilities of the board or district. When only one of the two candidates agrees to be interviewed, the interviews will be published Oct. 16, to give opponents time to be interviewed as well.
All of this goes live no later than October 16, the week ballots are mailed. To be sure you are #VoteReady, please register to vote (or check your voting address) at VoteWA (English) or VoteWA (Spanish).