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2005 Seattle Elections General Elections Voters' Guide Tom Carr
Video Voters Guide Statement of Candidate Click Here to View the You will need Written Voters' Pamphlet Statement Submitted by Candidate Seattle is a wonderful city with terrific neighborhoods. As your City Attorney, I am proud to have worked for the last four years to make it even better. We face many challenges as a City. The City Attorney's role is to help the Mayor and the City Council work together to face these challenges and make our city better. I work for the people of Seattle, through cooperation, innovation and effectiveness. We must work together to meet the City's needs. For our major projects, including the viaduct, the monorail and Sound Transit light rail, we have lawyers working in a coordinated effort to provide the Mayor and Council quick and accurate legal advice on these complex projects. It is better to prevent a problem than defend a lawsuit. As City Attorney, I have expanded the work of our lawyers to train city departments and emphasized risk management to avoid the mistakes that create lawsuits. Reducing the amount the city pays out in lawsuits leaves more money to provide essential city services. The City Attorney's office prosecutes those who commit crimes such as minor assaults, shoplifting and criminal trespass. Most of those defendants are addicted to drugs or alcohol. Jail is an expensive and often ineffective way to prevent them from offending. I helped create the first Community Court in the State of Washington which requires these offenders to give back to the community by working to clean up the streets and gives them the help they need to defeat their addictions. We have expanded the fight against Domestic Violence. We created a program to identify serial batterers and to devote additional resources to their prosecution and conviction. We have created the first victim safety inventory, which is a series of questions we ask every victim. This allows us to know better the risks each individual faces. We have taken other innovative approaches. This year we started filing auto theft cases as misdemeanors, allowing us to ask for longer sentences. Today we have several former car thieves, some who admitted stealing several cars a day, serving long jail sentences. We also created a legal clinic which allows law students to gain experience by prosecuting traffic infractions. This is a step toward making Seattle's streets safer. Cooperation, innovation and effectiveness have guided my work as your City Attorney. I hope to serve you for four more years. The above statement was written by the candidate, who is solely responsible for the contents therein. |
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Tel: (206) 354-9966
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