For many voters experience is a big factor when choosing a candidate. Many who enter city council races for the first time have experience in the business community, as a part of a non-profit or have served on a board or two. But that experience is limited and most have not served in government. Toby Nixon has all of this and then some.

“I say yes to too many people,” joked Nixon, who was a state representative for two-and-a-half terms for the 45th District, which includes Kirkland. “I am involved in eight different non-profit organizations right now … Should I be elected to the city council I will clearly need to reduce my level of involvement in some of those. But I love to be involved.”

Nixon was asked by many to consider a run for city council after working as the co-chair of the Annexation YES! Committee.

“I thought hard about it, it wasn’t an automatic yes because I am involved in so many activities,” said Nixon, who is running against Councilwoman Jessica Greenway for Position 4. “But ultimately I decided it was the right thing to do.”

Nixon is also the president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government.

“Kirkland is our home and I want it to be the best that it can be,” said Nixon. “That is why I have devoted so much of my time and energy over the last nearly two decades to making it an even better place.”

The candidate considers his biggest strength to have been bred by his 19 years at Microsoft negotiating operating agreements with other companies.

“We meet with our competitors in the industry, fierce competitors, who would like nothing more than to see us go out of business,” said Nixon. “And yet we have common interests … It is kind of a mine field and for 26 years I have navigated that and been a technical diplomat.”

He said that those skills served him well in Olympia where he was known as a person who would work across the aisle.

Nixon thinks it will help him to achieve his top three issues for Kirkland: spurring economic development, transparency in government and getting the budget under control.

“It seems like the city has had to go in and make cuts every year and this started even before the economy tanked before 2008,” said Nixon. “The challenge is that we have some longterm trends where the city’s costs are rising faster than revenues.”

Nixon said that retirement and health-care costs are higher for the city than in the private sector.

“We need to look very closely at matching the compensation packages that we have for public employees to what the equivalent positions are in the private sector,” said Nixon. “We can’t have inferior packages but it doesn’t have to be a Cadillac plan.”

One of the reasons that Nixon is concerned with the budget is the cost of annexation. Nixon is concerned about how the city will pay for annexation once the state tax credit runs out in 10 years. That tax credit is also not guaranteed to stay in the state budget during the next decade. He said that time gives the city council a chance to figure out how to equalize services throughout Kirkland.

“One of the ways that we will accomplish that is through economic development,” said Nixon, who stresses that the city cannot be all things to all people. “By improving the business climate, attracting more employers and jobs to the city we will increase the revenue.”

The candidate feels that the first priority for the city should be safety. While most feel that subject concerns police and fire response, he says it extends to things like regular maintenance and building inspections.

“The city has been going around to neighborhood associations and talking to them about pavement conditions,” said Nixon. “It is kind of prepping people for the idea that we are going to have a new tax … Well I don’t understand why that basic maintenance was deferred in the first place. It is not like it is just beginning, we are on the steep part of a downward slope.”

Nixon goes back to when he was in the state legislature and how they prioritized programs in 2003.

“They prioritized all of these things to high priority, medium priority and low priority and then specifically said that you can’t have more than a third of them in each category,” said Nixon. “When you start bucketing your budget you buy the high priority services first and when you run out of money you stop.”

But to get any projects done the city needs revenue and Nixon believes that is done by managing the budget better and increasing economic development.

Nixon points to high vacancy rates and the ongoing situation at Totem Lake Malls as where the city could do better. He takes issue with how far the city has gone with regulations.

“We are saddled with this very specific, in my mind, stifling (development) plan,” said Nixon. “Instead of enabling innovation and letting the developers be creative and do what they think is going to be best … I think the role of the city is to make sure that people don’t injure each other. If there are any negative impacts on neighboring properties … you have to make sure those are mitigated. But it shouldn’t be the city’s role to impose the vision of the city council members.”

The candidate also took issue with the city’s business license fee or head tax.

“There is no other issue I have heard about more from people in the annexation area,” said Nixon. “ … Just the idea that somebody who is a real estate agent, operating out of their own home, they are not having any more impact on the infrastructure of the city by virtue of being a real estate agent than someone who is just living there. And yet the city wants to charge them hundreds of dollars. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Nixon said he would, at the very least, see an exemption for some of the smaller businesses.

A passion for Nixon is transparency in government. And although he thinks that Kirkland does pretty well with the issue, he also thinks it can always be better.

“I want Kirkland to be a model to the rest of the state of how to do open government right,” said Nixon. “From a city policy perspective that will be a priority for me, to see what more can we do.”

For more information, visit www.tobynixon.com.