I ran for City Council originally in 1997 with a major campaign plank to explore and implement reform of how the council conducted its business, under the banner of "streamlining city government".

My idea was to allow the Council to reorganize itself into distinct 'committees', and have three council members assigned to each of the defined major areas of business, reporting back to the full Council with homework completed and recommendations for actions in hand. By the end of 1998, the Council adopted and codified the Council Committee form of governance. I have served since on the Finance and Administration Committee, currently as Chair for the sixth time. The 'committee' form of Council governance has proved to be instrumental to the conduct of city business all these years later.

In the mayoral election cycle of 2001, I advocated for a charter change of City government to a 'City Manager' form of governance. In a size operation that Poulsbo city government has become, with a $40 million dollar budget, professional management is imperative, and will be explored as a question again in the future, as a pledge of mine.

In 2003, under the leadership of the Finance and Administration Committee, the city undertook an 'efficiency study' which has resulted in the streamlining of city processes and consolidation of personel, resulting in both reduced payroll and benefit costs to the taxpayer, and more modern processing of internal bookeeeping and accounting, with this years purchase of a complete operating software and hardware system. the return on investment of this purchase will result in many dividends to citizens in the years to come.