SEQUIM — Bob Anundson, one of two men to file for Sequim City Council seats on Monday, gives two reasons for running.
One is that “I’m nuts,” Anundson, 67, said on Monday.
Seriously, he wants to keep Sequim both “affordable and a nice place to live,” while perhaps holding off on some of the city’s more expensive planned projects.
“I would like to spend money differently,” added the retired technology company manager who left a suburb of Portland, Ore., in 2002 to move to Sequim.
Anundson added that the firing of city manager Bill Elliott in May 2008 — and the costly search for a successor — are examples of things he’d approach in a different way.
Anundson is running — unopposed, so far — for the council seat to be vacated by Paul McHugh, who said last month that after eight years on the panel he won’t seek re-election.
Walt Schubert, 69, also filed on Monday for re-election to the council seat he has held for nearly nine years.
One other council seat is open: that held by Bill Huizinga, who said recently that he plans to run again. Huizinga, 68, has been a steadfast advocate for affordable housing in Sequim and said he has “unfinished business” on the council.
As of Monday night, no one had filed for Huizinga’s or Schubert’s positions.
Anundson served about nine months on the City Council in 2007, after he was appointed in February to succeed Patricia Kasovia-Schmitt, who had resigned. He sought election to his seat in November 2007, but Erik Erichsen defeated him.
The Sequim School District Board of Directors has three seats open: Those held by Bev Horan and Virginia O’Neil and one vacated by the late June Robinson, who died May 13.
Jon Kirshbaum, a travel writer, retired systems administrator and a Clallam County Historical Society volunteer, filed Monday for the District 2 seat held by O’Neil.
O’Neil said Monday that she will run for re-election, as did Horan, though Horan has no opponent yet. Board members are nonpartisan and serve four-year terms.
The School Board will appoint a successor to Robinson, whose term expires in 2011.
Applications for her seat were accepted last week. The School Board is interviewing candidates today and is expected to appoint a new director on Thursday.
Sequim’s recreation district 1, which governs the Sequim Aquatic Recreation Center, saw one filing on Monday. Jan Richardson will run against Susan Sorensen, who is in her eighth year on the SARC board of commissioners.
Richardson ran for commissioner against, and was defeated by, Annette Kuss in 2007.
The SARC board sets the budget and decides when to buy new equipment for the fitness center built in 1988 with a $2.4 million bond.
Sorensen said on Monday that she will run for her third four-year term. SARC will stay fit with a fiscally conservative board, she has said, while Richardson has leaned toward upgrading the center to keep it “ahead of the curve.”
In Clallam County Fire District 3, which covers the Sequim area from Carlsborg to Diamond Point, Commissioner Gary L. Coffey filed Monday for his second six-year term.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
