Kirkland City Councilman Bob Sternoff used city email resources while the council was in session to conduct an intimate personal relationship with his girlfriend, recently released city documents disclose.

From May of this year until early this month, Sternoff, who was divorced 15 years ago, sent scores of messages, some of them sexually explicit, to the woman. In addition, many messages in the same email threads contained disparaging comments about fellow council members and un-named members of the public who attended city council meetings.

The e-mails were released simultaneously to the full city council and a Kirkland blogger as well as to the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. EFF is electing not to publish them due to their explicit nature and to protect the privacy of Sternoff’s girlfriend, who is not a public figure.

Sternoff confirmed the explicit nature of the messages in two telephone interviews, one immediately after a public disclosure request was filed for all e-mails and other communications between council members while they were in session and the other after they were disclosed.

In the initial interview, Sternoff was forthcoming that his public-resource-generated e-mails with his girlfriend, whom he has known for several decades and to whom he is now engaged, contained comments of a “somewhat personal nature,” many specifics of which he disclosed. Expressing embarrassment over the e-mails, he said he made no attempt to prevent their disclosure even when given an opportunity to do so by city staff.

In the second interview, Sternoff said, “It was not my intent to use the city e-mail for that purpose. I haven’t done that before or since – it just happened.”

Included with the personal e-mails were scores more dealing with routine city business, constituent service, and other personal matters of an innocuous nature.

With his council seat not up for re-election until 2011, Sternoff had hopes of becoming Kirkland’s next mayor, a position filled from the ranks of the city council by a vote of its members. Now, however, he’s having second thoughts about continuing public service at all.

“This is causing me to re-think whether I want to stay in public life,” he said. “My goal is not to hurt the city. Maybe this gives me a road to go do something else.”

Sternoff expressed frustration over the matter as he alleged that, while his personal messages went through the city’s e-mail server, other council members routinely bypass it using private e-mail addresses to communicate during council meetings.

This blog post is reprinted from the Evergreen Freedom Foundation Web site and courtesy of former Kirkland resident Scott St. Clair.