Flock cameras, taxes, Pavilion, growth: MLT Council candidates discussed their positions

Seven Mountlake Terrace candidates who are running for four City Council positions addressed several key city issues Wednesday evening during a Candidate Conversations event at the Mountlake Terrace Library. Topics  included Flock cameras, property taxes, the aging Recreation Pavilion and population growth.

The following candidates participated: 

• City Council Position 1 – Rick Ryan and Sam Doyle
• City Council Position 3 – William Paige Jr. and Danny Luoma
• City Council Position 4 – Kyoko Matsumoto Wright and Steven Mosman
• City Council Position 2 – Steve Woodard (unopposed)

My Neighborhood News Network CEO Teresa Wippel was the moderator.

Woodard spoke first, stating he had the honor of serving the City Council for six years and running unopposed is a sign of confidence in the council’s work. He thanked the community for its support.

Here is a summary of the issues discussed.

Position 1: Taxes, Flock cameras, underserved communities

Ryan said the sales tax in Mountlake Terrace is lower than in Lynnwood and Seattle. While he said the City Council has not talked about raising sales tax, he said the city will be facing a $1.3 million deficit in 2026.

Doyle said sales tax is “terribly regressive” and the state’s sales tax is higher than most parts of the U.S.

“If I had my way, I would have a state income tax and potentially a city one because it’s a more equitable way of taxation,” she said. 

Regarding property taxes, Doyle said it is not as “egregious and regressive” as sales tax, and property owners can have a situation where their home has a high value but their income is low.

“Some people qualify for tax exemptions because they’re seniors or disabled, but it’s still in regressive ways,” she said. “But I think [property tax] is in the middle. It’s still a progressive way to taxation. I feel torn when it comes to property taxes…We don’t have a large population. We don’t have a large amount of very wealthy people like Seattle, so something like the JumpStart tax or payroll taxes are not as effective in a smaller city. So we have to be creative with how we fund things.”

Ryan pointed to the swimming pool at the city’s Recreation Pavilion, stating thatthe city is exploring ways for a replacement, possibly through a regional  park authority. 

“But the thing is you have to get neighboring cities that want to join with you, and unfortunately, we do have some cities that are in a deficit right now,” he said. “And I don’t know if they want to join their citizens wanting to increase their taxes for the pool.”

Flock cameras

Doyle said she is “very much opposed” to having Flock license plate reader cameras in Mountlake Terrace. 

“It’s a waste of money, it’s offensive to our constitutional rights,” she said. “It puts marginalized people at risk, especially undocumented people…and it’s an invasion of privacy.”

Ryan said his support for Flock cameras is based on his research, which included listening to city council meeting discussions in Lynnwood and Everett, which use the Flock system, and recommendations from Mountlake Terrace and Everett police. He said that while he has followed the stories of how Flock violated some rules on the East Coast, he didn’t find anything about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or other federal agencies using Flock to track people in Washington state.

“I’ve also found that there are 80 cities using this in Washington state, six counties and three tribes using Flock cameras. So given all that, I have supported Flock,” he said.

“I don’t care that other cities are using it. It’s not the right choice for us,” Doyle said. “If I have a choice for this city, it’s not happening here. We are a tiny, little postage stamp of a city of four square miles. We don’t need a tool like that.”

She said some councilmembers have said that Flock could be used similarly to Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts. “But at what cost? It’s not worth our privacy. It’s not worth our Fourth Amendment to let us be tracked,” Doyle said. “And we know that Flock is sharing [the data] with Homeland Security.”

Ryan said Flock cameras aren’t just for tracking stolen vehicles. They could be used for burglary and robbery incidents, such as the stabbing of two clerks at a Mountlake Terrace Shell gas station.

“If they take off in a car, we get the license,” he said. “[Flock] get the license number, and then we can track them and find the criminals that are bothering us.”

Speaking to the idea of creating an oversight group to monitor the system, Doyle said that if a policing advisory board is needed to keep an eye on Flock, then there’s a problem with the camera system.

Engaging the underserved

To engage more of Mountlake Terrace’s underserved communities, Ryan said the city has a website that offers different language translations, quarterly newsletters, invitations to public meetings, such as the senior event at Ballinger Park.

Doyle said the city’s website needs to be redone because it looks “rustic” and “outdated.” She said the city also uses Facebook to connect with residents, but indicated that the social media platform is mainly for older audiences “born before 1980.” She suggested the city should also use Instagram and TikTok for reaching out to younger voters.

During the Q&A session following the candidates’ discussion, Mountlake Terrace resident Michael Jones asked how each candidate would be stewards of the residents’ tax dollars?

“I look at people’s basic needs and support policies and funding that benefits the most people,” Doyle said.

“Our priority would be to have public safety receive the money and our utilities because we do have an aging infrastructure where pipes are breaking, as we did on the county line,” Ryan said.

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Position 3: Budget shortfalls, housing, Flock cameras

Regarding the city’s budget shortfalls, appointed incumbent Councilmember William Paige Jr. said that the city should let the council’s fiscal sustainability task force do their job and report their results to the City Council. The city should also engage the community and make decisions not just based on a small group of people, he said. 

Paige’s opponent, Danny Luoma, said the city needs to be transparent so that its residents understand what is happening and how the decisions are made.

Paige said that the city should not “sugarcoat” issues and used the Rec Pavilion as an example. Both candidates said communication should meet people where they are since everyone listens differently. 

To increase engagement, Paige said the city needs to reach beyond the small group that usually attends meetings or fills out surveys and get thousands more involved by encouraging people to spread the word and bring others into the process.

Luoma said he would like to see the city safety app expand beyond keeping track of street issues, such as news and a calendar, “so that people don’t have to check Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat…”

Growth and affordability

Luoma said the average single-family home price is about $700,000, and an annual income of $175,000 a year is needed to afford it. He said that having a denser population in the Town Center area would bring the prices down and attract more businesses while maintaining single-family homes away from the Town Center.

Paige said that the city also needs to attract builders and developers who can construct affordable housing while still making a profit.

Flock cameras

Paige said that he voted in favor of the Flock cameras but changed his mind after he learned about Flock’s involvement with Homeland Security. 

“I felt like we were misled. I felt like they weren’t transparent,” Paige said. “It’s not the mechanism; it’s the company. If you were doing business with somebody, and you found out that they lied to you or held something back from you, then you wouldn’t sign the contract. You want your money back. I want my money back.”

Luoma said that he would have voted no on Flock because of their auditing system and data governance.

“When you go to these audit websites to look at what has happened, people want to put any text they want in there, and they claimed it was a case ID, but nothing is needed to actually look at the cameras,” he said. “It’s hard to tell how the rest of Mountlake Terrace residents feel about this. There’s about 20,000 people that live here, 14,000 voting residents, and I’ve heard maybe from 20. I would like to hear how the rest of the community feels about this.”

During the Q&A, Mountlake Terrace resident Steve Carter said that he spends more of his social time in Edmonds than Mountlake Terrace because Edmonds has a walkable city center.

“I would love to see the same thing happen here. There’s no need for cars in city centers from an environmental sustainability [and] financial sustainability point of view,” he said.

Luoma agreed, pointing to future development  at the former Rogers Marketplace parking lot. 

“I love being able to walk out, get groceries and not use the car,” he said. “I still use it because it’s a way to get to the mountains and get out of the city once in a while. But I love the idea of going out for a night on the town.”

Paige agreed with Luoma and noted that the council recently approved a traffic plan to improve walkability and bike access on several streets, which aligns with the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

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Position 4: City character, attracting new businesses, public safety

To maintain Mountlake Terrace’s vibe and character, candidate Steve Mosman said that he feels the friendliness and community engagement in the city is “slipping away a little bit with increased population that is a mandate from the state.” 

“We’re not keeping that friendliness anymore,” he said. 

Position 4 incumbent and current Mountlake Terrace Mayor Kyoko Matsumoto Wright said that buildings and housing change, but not the people. 

“The people are still the friendly people that I’ve known for the past 40 years,” she said. 

“The problem that I’m seeing happening is not just isolated in Mountlake Terrace. To me, it’s the entire South County area…” Mosman said. “We have this issue that started a couple of decades ago with localizing the growth of all of our communities rather than letting the communities decide what they want to see in our community. It’s all of a sudden become the state mandate. And when we have that happen, we have a group of people in Olympia who say, ‘Oh, we need to have that. We need to have this.’ [They’re] not coming to us and say, ‘What do you want as a community?’ 

“I’m not against growth, but what I am against is forced growth,” he added.

Matsumoto Wright said that growth is going to happen even if the city does nothing. “We are growing quite a bit in the next 10 to 20 years, and I would like for us to plan the growth here. If we don’t plan, the builders are going to be building whatever they want.”

Public safety

Matsumoto Wright emphasized the need for a fully staffed and well-trained police department.

Mosman said the city needs to act quickly on traffic safety, pointing out several dangerous intersections along major corridors and freeway exits, such as 44th Avenue West and 212th Street Southwest, and 62nd Avenue West and 220th Street Southwest..

Matsumoto Wright acknowledged the problems at some intersections, which are rated on a scale from A to F. She said fixes like stop signs or traffic circles require funding. She noted the city had hoped for a $23 million grant to improve Main Street but didn’t receive it. 

“If we got all the grants that we went after…we would’ve gotten a lot of these things accomplished,” she said. “But now the prices have doubled, tripled…we’re still trying.”

During the Q&A, audience member Sophie E. asked the both candidates for their opinions about Flock cameras.

“I can’t imagine anyone in this room who was facing a situation where they were a victim of crime, small, medium or severe,” Mosman said. “[Who] would not want our police force to have every tool available at their disposal to catch perpetrators and solve their crime and bring justice?”

“Well, I don’t know – with what all that’s going on right now – where I stand, but I still know that I talk to all these people, and I’m continuing to talk to people,” Matsumoto Wright said. “And you would think that I would be running into people who are adamantly against it, and I’ve only run against one so far. And I’ve been talking to a lot of people.”

A video of the Candidate Conversations event is available on YouTube.