State, local leaders chew on budget, policy needs

By The Herald Editorial Board

Alicia Crank wants to get the conversations started. A lot of them.

The Edmonds resident, with a professional consulting background with businesses, agencies and governments, formerly was executive director of Seattle City Club, leading such efforts there. But she’s now turning her attention to her home county and elsewhere in the region with a new effort, the Northwest Washington Civic Circle.

The newly launched nonprofit intends to focus on civic engagement and civil discourse programs and events in Snohomish, Island, Kitsap, Skagit and Whatcom counties, and launched those efforts Wednesday with a discussion among local government officials and state lawmakers at Everett’s Edward D. Hansen Conference Center.

“As someone who has worked in this space for a good 10 years now, I recognize that it’s kind of a civic engagement desert up here when we’re not talking politics,” Crank said in opening the discussion. “But there’s so many great organizations, large and small, they’re just kind of siloed. So the hope is that the Northwest WA Civic Circle, we can partner and do programming like this to pool our resources, share our ideas and have a greater reach.”

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/editorial-state-local-leaders-chew-on-budget-policy-needs/