City Council Position 2

Earlier this year I decided to run for City Council Position 2. This was my first time running for public office, and I made it up as I went along.

The mayor, heads of various city departments, and elected council members meet up twice per month to discuss city issues and collect community input. I first attended in order to request a permit from the city for a local event I was helping to plan/run. I might just be sorely starved for human interaction from working remotely, but for some reason I was drawn in. I started attending regularly. Even if I didn’t have input, I liked being in the room where it happens.

One day in early May I saw a posting from a current city council member letting us know that 3 positions were up for reelection and signs-up were happening now. I did some online sleuthing about what exactly a city councilor did, looked up the fees & timeline for running, and signed up for the 2025 election!

The Backstory

In the summer of 2020 I moved to a small city in northern Washington state. When I say small, I mean tiny. My city’s population is ~1/3 of the high school I taught at before moving here. My city contains 0 stop lights, 3.5 restaurants, and our library is unfortunately only open 3 days per week.

Not long after we moved here, our city suffered the historic worst flooding the area had ever seen. While it was terrifying for people like us new to the area, we made it through with minimal damage. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for our city’s library. Our first “community event” was participating in the city’s flood cleanup efforts, including emptying a building of its hundreds (of hundreds) of waterlogged overflow books being stored for the library.

It was several years before our library opened its doors again. My wife and I are big fans of the library, and were even married in one, but had yet to set foot in our new home’s library. After the grand reopening, we decided to go check things out. The friendly library staff smelled fresh blood and gave us a flyer for a “Friends of the Library” meeting later that night. We did something uncharacteristic and decided to leave the house to go to the event. As soon as they gave us our free t-shirt we knew we were lifers and full committed to this group.

My involvement in Friends of the Sumas Library (FOSL) kickstarted a powerful interest in my local community. I help host movies in the park, bingo nights, and am even trying to get a film society started. Along the way I also found out about city council, having overlapped with both the mayor and several council members through FOSL’s community events. Side note, huge respect to our city mayor for letting us throw pies at his face!

At this point in my life I have been involved with FOSL for several years and am now the acting secretary (Board of Directors baby!). I have also been attending city council meetings with regularity for the better part of a year. I am still early in my community era, but I’m not going anywhere.

The Election

My campaign, and I am using this term as loosely as I can, consisted of:

• submitting information about me to put in the voter’s pamphlet
• setting up a campaign website: brettegbert.com
• two (2) virtual interviews with the League of Women Voters Bellingham-Whatcom
• answered a questionnaire for a local newspaper
• one (1) post on our city’s Facebook group

I paid $18 to file for office and $10 on my website’s domain, bringing my grand total for out of pocket expenses to $28 (plus a whole lotta time to figure everything out).

Primary Election

This year there were 3 separate city council positions up for reelection. All three incumbents (I can say it, I’m a politician now) were running again. I picked one at random and signed up for Position 2.

Turns out a fifth person was interested in running, but instead of signing up for another position, he also chose Position 2. So 2 spots running unopposed, and 1 spot with 3 frenemies. Nice.

In Washington, the primary election narrows down candidates to the top 2, who both move on to the later general election. Three candidates enter, two candidates leave. I can’t speak much to the third candidate as I do not know him, but in the end the incumbent city councilor and I are the ones that moved on. I had dozens of followers. Dozens!

General Election

It was a weird feeling looking at my own face and reading my own description in the official printed voter’s guide that gets sent to everyone. This election overall is a smaller one, with the “power” positions more at the mayors-of-medium-sized-cities level. But it was still fun to see bigger ticket names and issues right next to mine. I got a few good keepsakes to throw in a bin and be looked at every few years/decades.

In the end, I lost ~35% to his 65%. I have no hard feelings and appreciate the work my opponent has and will continue to put in. I’ll still be there in the audience seats, enjoying the fact that I can leave when it gets a bit boring.