Tigard City Council election

This summer I went to a Tigard city council meeting to voice some concern about how the city was annexing properties in my area. It was interesting to get a little glimpse into our local government and also a little disappointing. I’ve grown to have the opinion that the city doesn’t have the vision or desire to guide development in a sustainable way.
Our city’s major problems are related to growing pains (eg: traffic problems and clean water sources). The city council seems to prefer to react to these when they become so troublesome that the voting public’s sentiment forces them to. In the particular context of annexation and residential development, they don’t have rules that would require the developers to invest in infrastructure to support their developments. Instead they allow developers to quickly build, sell and then when residents move in they begin to find the problems, complain to the city and eventually (maybe) something boils over and the city either can’t afford to address the problem, says residents should do something themselves or has to pass a tax to fund a solution. The problems that I see in the city are largely caused by lack of sustainable planning on the city’s part. Either they don’t see the problems or they’re choosing not to solve them now (when they’re cheapest) versus in the future. Neither possibility is a sign of strong leadership.
Having noted that Nick Wilson is up for election this year, I was particularly surprised to see him talking about fairly sustainable ideas in the press. Of the people on the city council with whom I interacted, Nick Wilson struck me as particularly short sighted and lacking in spine. So much so that his is actually the only name I consistently remember on the council! The others didn’t inspire me, but he actively uninspired me. If he is elected it will be interesting to see if he actually pursues and drives the things he’s now talking about. In the meantime I can’t vote for him.