Election Wrap: Keel Says He Will Rely On School Board Success For Council

It’s official.

Election season is here in University Place, with candidates for the November races filtering out of the electoral woodwork.

On the University Place City Council, gone will be longtime elected official and .­

Running for her position is , a University Place School Board member who announced his candidacy earlier this month.

Keel, 52, told Patch this week that he is not running because he has an “ax to grind” with the city’s elected leaders. In fact, he realizes that one person on the dais cannot accomplish anything alone.

If elected, he would push for the city to “get back to its roots,” referring to his idea that University Place is a family oriented community. As someone who has raised three children in UP, two of whom went through the school system, he would like to put an emphasis on the city’s parks. He’d also push to increase transparency and keep residents informed on decisions affecting the community.

But the big issue in University Place is the city’s finances. Keel says he wants the city to lower its debit, which ballooned to more than $40 million because of its Town Center project and the lagging economy.

“I think we can do better, and I use the school district as an example,” Keel said.

The UP School District, like the rest of the state, is facing declines in revenue. School leaders asked the community what were its priorities and made decisions that, for the most part, the community could a consensus. That, he said, is a big reason why the district has operated without major cuts the past three or four years.

“Consequently, we don’t have people storming our school board meetings,” he joked.

It’s that experience that Keel will be banking on come November.

Carl Mollnow, a retired Air Force officer who has had unsuccessful bids for a City Council position in previous elections, will again vie for a position this year.

He told Patch that he’s running for Pos. 6, currently held by Gerald Gehring. announced that he’s also running for the position in December.

Although he has yet to officially declare his candidacy for the 2012 governor’s race, state Attorney General Rob McKenna sure stumped like a gubernatorial hopeful last week.

In a meet-and-greet event in West Tacoma that was organized, in part, by UP Councilman Javier Figueroa, McKenna spoke to an audience of about 30 supporters, addressing three areas that he feels could help solve the state’s financial dilemmas. First, the likely GOP frontrunner for the ticket if he did run would raise the exemption for the state’s business and occupation tax to include more businesses.

“We rely more on taxes from businesses than other states,” he said. “We have got to stop relying so heavily on business for taxes.”

McKenna also said he would cut the cost of state government by making it trimmer and more efficient. He pointed to his experience in the AG’s Office, which is down 125 positions compared to the previous biennium but is still “getting work done,” he said.

“I know how to run the office,” he said. “I know how to empower my people, but also how to hold them accountable, work together, be more productive, more powerful.”

“People who I inherited who weren’t good performers no longer work for me,” he added. “That’s why we were able to downsize and still do more work. We can do that in every agency of state government.”

Finally, McKenna talked about investing more in higher education, which will be a good thing for the state overall. He said tuition costs are rising too fast for in-state students, which drives them away from the state’s best colleges and increases the likelihood that their talents will be used elsewhere in the country.

“It’s smart for the state to invest in hire education,” he said.

McKenna is expected to announce his decision on whether to run by summer.