When the calendar turned to 2018 it marked a significant change on the City Council with Hoang Tran and Jesse Johnson coming on board replacing Bob Celski and Jeanne Burbidge. You might think that once the election was over that all would be forgiven – that no one would remember Mayor Jim Ferrell supported both Tran’s and Johnson’s opponents. Or that most of the incumbent council members had supported Ferrell over Deputy Mayor Susan Honda. Nice concept, and it even has some truth to it. But in politics, policy decisions and compromises are achieved by who you trust.

Some of our council members are learning who to trust and some are better at hiding their true feelings while working with people who tried to defeat them. Learning how to work with Ferrell, who wants to continue his dominance of the City Council, adds a whole new challenge.

The year started with Ferrell’s mayoral opponent Honda winning the deputy mayor position in a split vote. The position gives her influence over the council agenda and appointive power to some committees. Her opponent was expected to be Mark Koppang, but he couldn’t muster the votes and supported Lydia Assefa-Dawson, who had previously agreed to support Honda. Ferrell was in the background trying to help anybody but Honda.

We learned that Ferrell, despite winning re-election, is still not happy about working with Honda. Even after she was elected deputy mayor, supporters of Ferrell went so far as to look for a reason to file an ethics complaint, though it didn’t happen.

Honda later used her influence over the agenda to highlight the salary commission’s award of a large pay increase for Ferrell about the time he was supporting a utility tax increase. She has been consistent in her support for transparency and also included the council pay raise, though it was much smaller. The utility tax and pay raise were bad optics for Ferrell who likely had a different view of Honda’s motivation.

Homeless Task Force Chair Sharry Edwards has tried to take some of the flack for the closed committee meetings. Nice loyalty, but make no mistake: This is Ferrell’s committee. If he wanted the meetings open, they would be open. Honda wants the meetings open to the public.

By the end of the year, you may hear rumors of Ferrell trying to recruit someone to run against Honda in 2019.

After the deputy mayor vote, council members tried to put on a show of unity. It lasted about five minutes, as council member Martin Moore launched into a soliloquy of why he hadn’t supported Honda. It was shocking in its tone and timing. Speaking after Moore, Dini Duclos, who provided the key vote for Honda, tried to mend fences.

In switching her vote from Honda to herself, Assefa-Dawson showed an ambitious side that others had seen before. She is a democrat, who has endorsed republicans. In future agreements her fellow council members will recall her susceptibility to ambition. If she learned a lesson, it may be to give more thought to her colleagues’ motivation. She had been on the council for two years versus Honda’s six years. Observers felt she was being used to try and stop Honda.

Even though Honda exposed Ferrell’s pay raise, she also made committee appointments that tried to bring balance between the groups. Despite Moore’s attack, she gave him a good appointment.

The council, with a push from the new members, moved the priority of handling the homeless problem from a police action to a higher priority and want a multi-faceted solution.

In looking for new ways to establish direct voter contact outside a council meeting, some council members are branching out on their own. Jesse Johnson was a leader in the student walk to protest school shootings and has also organized student forums. His ability to attract young people and register them to vote is the reason Ferrell supported his opponent. Johnson has Ferrell looking over his shoulder. Honda attended Johnson’s student forum; Ferrell did not. But Johnson isn’t the only one branching out, as Moore has also been holding group coffees. But there are other reasons than just voter contact.

Ferrell dominates council meetings and there is no actual public interaction – only testimony. Some mentioned at the neighborhood meetings that city resources and staff support focus on Ferrell and ignore the council. And the city’s new communication coordinator was thought to be for the benefit of the city staff and council members, but council members now view him as Ferrell’s new political staff.

But the publicity around the tax increase, the pay raise, Centerstage and the closed meetings of the homeless committee in just the first six months of the year have surfaced a new reason for the council to start looking outside the system for feedback. Despite his big re-election win, there is a feeling that Ferrell’s credibility in the community is slipping, and they don’t want to be judged by his actions.

As we hit mid-year, there are still some raw feelings, but Ferrell may have unintentionally helped play a constructive role in the council working together. A majority favor shining the light of transparency on the mayor’s homeless committee and have gotten him to publish minutes. It’s not the open meetings they want, and they may need to take a firmer stand. And his recent comments of needing “boundaries on public property” sounded more like his past statements than the more recent, and may signal why the meetings are in secret, suggesting the possible use of the committee as a political shield to justify conclusions. Many in the public noted Chairperson Edwards’ unfortunate comparison of the homeless secret meetings to those surrounding the PAEC’s Blue Ribbon Committee, which resulted in a “done deal,” and no public vote. The public doesn’t like secrecy, as it could allow Ferrell to get around the council’s goal for a more thoughtful approach. A majority of council members also want to continue funding support for Centerstage despite Ferrell’s objections. Ferrell’s latest gambit extends the contract two more months, but Centerstage will pay rent after that in place of receiving financial support. That is a poison pill to force them out. The city may help with a $5,000 grant for violence prevention programming at local schools. But it will be an uphill battle for Centerstage to survive the next year, as small fundraisers and bake sales only buy a limited amount of time.

Behind the scenes, more council members are expressing difficulty in working with Ferrell and even some of his supporters have raised “trust” as a question.

The next six months will tell us more about Ferrell and whether he can adjust to the changing circumstances and how the council will progress with each other. A strong mayor needs the balance of a strong council. Watch as the stage is slowly being set for new ideas, new relationships and next year’s elections.

Federal Way resident Bob Roegner is a former mayor of Auburn and retired public official. He can be reached at bjroegner@comcast.net.