SEQUIM – Ken Hays now has an opponent for Sequim City Council Position 7.
She’s Marge Williams, and she’s running as an official write-in candidate, having filed an $18 fee with the Clallam County Auditor’s Office on Friday.
“I was asked to run by a group of people,” Williams said, who declined to name anyone in the group.
“I thought about it long and hard and decided that yes, I do have some experience to offer the city,” Williams said.
“And I want to offer an alternative to the person who’s running.”
Her name will not appear on the ballot, but votes for her will be counted if her name is written on the ballot in the appropriate write-in space.
Williams filed under the name Margaret, but she prefers to be called Marge.
Until Friday, Hays had a clear, uncontested shot at City Council position 7, to be vacated by Councilman John Beitzel, who is running for a seat on the Olympic Medical Center Hospital Commission.
Now Williams, a 59-year-old retired community planner and auditor’s assistant who moved to Sequim in 2005, is mapping her campaign.
This is her first run for elected office, though she served on the Sequim Planning Commission in 2005 and 2006 as an appointee filling an unexpired term.
“I believe we should do more to guide the economic development of Sequim from the ground up, by encouraging . . . small, locally owned businesses,” Williams said.
“We are a rural community, and we should stay that way.
“A lot can be done to preserve the character of the city, even with development,” by planting trees and landscaping buffers, and by “being careful with heights and densities.”
