Snohomish County primary elections are right around the corner, with ballots due Aug. 5. Two out of four open seats on the Lynnwood City Council on the August ballot, with six candidates vying for Positions 1 and 3. 

To inform residents regarding who’s running for local office, Lynnwood Today sent the same set of questions to each candidate regarding their run for city council. 

Council Vice President Josh Binda, elected in 2021, seeks re-election to his Position 3 seat. His challengers are Tyler Hall and Bryce Owings. 

Visit Lynnwood Today’s Election 2025 page to learn more about what’s on the ballot in Lynnwood this year.

Minor edits were made to candidate responses for brevity, grammar and clarity.

Tyler Hall

Tyler Hall is a political newcomer, with a background in law tech and software engineering. His story, however, began in customer service roles, where he worked as a barista for a small coffee shop and a custodian for a nonprofit. He then moved on to the tech world, spending a few years as a program manager and systems engineer for Amazon. 

He then decided to leave tech to pursue law school, later earning a degree from the University of Washington. He briefly worked for the Seattle City Attorney’s office, specializing in civil law, later transitioning to criminal law for the Snohomish County Prosecuting Attorney. He also volunteers as an editor and served as the chief technology officer of the Washington Journal of Social and Environmental Justice. Additionally, he has experience drafting proposed legislation for an environmental nonprofit organization. 

“My initial goals with this career shift were to combat corporate greed and climate change through the law, and this focus expanded into a passion for municipal government,” Hall said. 

How do you plan to apply your personal experiences to better the city of Lynnwood?

“Lynnwood is facing many challenges that are without precedent, including rapid urbanization, housing affordability, fiscal uncertainty, climate change and unpredictability about the state of our nation. Lynnwood will need bold and effective solutions to address these new and complex challenges. 

My broad range of professional experience has always helped me to find creative outside-the-box solutions, finding opportunities to apply lessons from one  industry to solve tough problems in another. With my breadth of professional experience along with my legal education, I can manifest my passion to ensure Lynnwood has the effective legislative solutions to rise to its many challenges.” 

Give an elevator pitch of your platform and why you are running for council.

“Lynnwood needs a city council who will get to work on the big problems ahead. Whenever I see something that’s broken and think “someone should do something about this,” my next reaction is to jump in and work toward a solution. Lynnwood had several council positions on the ballot this year, and this mentality is the reason I am running for Position 3 specifically. A day before the filing window closed, no one else had stepped up to run for Position 3, and someone needed to do something about it. 

I am running because I am willing to make the hard decisions that Lynnwood needs to face its numerous challenges. Lynnwood needs a council that is equipped to respond and adapt this city to a changing climate. Lynnwood needs a council that will challenge the inequitable tax and revenue streams and that will take concrete measures to make housing more affordable and make neighborhoods safe and vibrant. Lynnwood needs a council that actively protects the life and liberty of all its people. 

With my background, my education and my initiative to implement innovative solutions, I believe I am particularly suited to effectively legislate for Lynnwood’s biggest problems.”

If elected, what’s one thing you’d like to see happen/change in your time on the council?

“I want Lynnwood to work more with the Housing Authority of Snohomish County (HASCO) to work toward solving the housing affordability crisis. The causes of the housing crisis are vast, but two major problems are a lack of new housing supply and the ‘missing middle’ problem, where there is a vacuum of affordable home ownership options in the gulf between apartments and detached single-family homes.

Our housing affordability crisis has only been worsened by for-profit housing developers. We cannot wait for profit-driven corporations to solve a societal crisis, and this city cannot adequately regulate the problem when developers continue to prioritize their investors over the public. Lynnwood must take bigger steps to address housing supply directly. By shifting the entirety of new housing developments to HASCO, we can create a better spectrum of housing options. Instead of building for the highest return on investment for shareholders, we can build for what works best for Lynnwood.

I would like to see HASCO directly build supportive housing, low-cost apartments, condominiums, townhomes, duplexes, bungalow courts, and a range of cohousing developments. Lynnwood has more housing managed by HASCO than our immediate neighbors, and the quality of the housing in their inventory exceeds the often-maligned public housing in many eastern cities. This comes from the quality of public employees in Washington and our robust state laws to protect from public corruption.

Lynnwood’s location on the light rail and under-developed regions around the station create a unique opportunity to rethink housing affordability solutions, instead of doing the same thing again and expecting different results.” 

If elected, how do you plan to remain professional and productive even though your opinions/values may conflict with those held by other councilmembers?

“Listening to understand. Someone once told me, “You can’t truly hold a position unless you fully understand the other side.” If I don’t agree with someone else, I want to fully understand their reasoning. It would be arrogant for me to think that I have all the answers or that I understand everything. I might have missed a critical point, and they may shift my perspective.

Additionally, adherence to procedure is critical to maintaining our civility. A healthy democracy will have disagreement and debate to help find the best solution. Due process within council proceedings ensures that minority viewpoints are not suppressed by the majority, and it reduces legislative churn by ensuring our laws withstand judicial scrutiny. As legislators we lose all credibility to make our city’s laws, if we cannot adhere to our own rules. The erosion of due process at the federal level demonstrates how dangerous of a slippery slope this can be. This is in part [is] why I will prioritize procedure and due process over my own personal opinions and values.”

What sets you apart from other candidates and current councilmembers?

“The lessons from my broad professional career and my passion for applying my legal education empower me to tackle Lynnwood’s systemic issues. My primary focus is addressing the fundamental challenges facing Lynnwood through effective legislation. While campaigning and public engagement are important aspects of public service, I am most committed to the core work of crafting city ordinances that tackle our most pressing issues. I believe that consistent, thoughtful governance demonstrates a council member’s value more clearly than any campaign strategy.

I think Lynnwood residents want practical solutions and forward-thinking leadership from their city council. My approach centers on delivering meaningful results and preparing our city for long-term success.” 

What’s something happening in Lynnwood you don’t think is being addressed or talked about enough? How would you address it?

“Climate change is underappreciated across all levels of government. Like all humans, we struggle to address issues that are beyond the horizon, and our four-year election cycle further narrows our municipal attention span away from properly facing long-range threats. Humanity has not yet done enough to fully mitigate the causes of climate change, and we are already seeing the results of this delay in our locally changing climate.

The problem of adapting and preparing for a changing climate is primarily a municipal problem, since it will require adapting built environments for this new normal. I will push for disaster preparedness to build our community defenses for more frequent and more severe storms. Self-sufficiency is especially critical as FEMA funds are actively withheld from Washington in bad faith. I will work with county partners for utility resiliency and shelter availability for deadly heat events that now necessitate air conditioning.

Additionally, I will continue to implement and expand the city’s climate mitigation efforts through decarbonizing infrastructure and transportation, as well as increasing tree cover for both carbon sinks and reducing heat island effects. I will work with our city planning department to ensure new construction is optimized for decarbonization, extreme weather, wildfire risks, and our drier summers. I will foster the growth of neighborhood support networks to facilitate dispersed relief in extreme events, by supporting community development and education campaigns.” 

What’s one issue or topic the council has talked about recently that’s piqued your interest, and how would you address it?

“Recently, I was alarmed by the discussion on the Flock surveillance system being deployed in Lynnwood, and particularly the broad council support. While it is undeniable that the system provides a tool for law enforcement for apprehending bad actors, I worry that this value as a tool is not outweighed by the risk. If we could completely guarantee that this information stays constrained to Lynnwood Police for the fulfillment of lawful arrest warrants under Washington law, these cameras would skew more toward the category of valuable tool. 

However, it would be short-sighted to not consider the broader situation in the United States. We exist with a federal administration that does not respect the due process of law and where corporate entities are consistently unable to resist the pressure of federal enforcement. So long as these cameras are present in the city, I do not believe that Lynnwood can truly guarantee that these surveillance devices will remain transparent and will not be abused by federal enforcement agencies.”

In recent years, multiple youth in Lynnwood have been injured or tragically lost their lives due to gun violence. If elected to the council, how would you approach this issue, given police involvement with youth is regulated by state law and largely out of city government control?

“I would work toward having a broader spectrum of public safety responses for people in crisis, allowing the community to seek help for individuals before it is too late. Such systems of support would be helpful not only against youth gun violence but against all criminal activity in Lynnwood.

At one end of the spectrum, where there is the most danger to public safety, we need armed officers that are available to protect the public from true bad actors. This should focus on violent, exploitative, and conspiratorial crimes, where the people of Washington have determined there is the highest risk to our society.

On the near end of the spectrum, we must have non-confrontational resources for at-risk individuals and their loved ones. Such resources would help these individuals avoid further steps toward public harm. Along this spectrum of public police interactions, we can foster a healthy relationship of mutual respect that focuses on protecting Lynnwood from harm. 

I will push for programs that promote more non-confrontational interactions between the public and police, particularly with teens and young adults. Many of the events and programs in the city seem to prioritize non-confrontational interactions with police toward young children and parents, while the most at-risk demographic receives minimal opportunities.

I would also advocate for diversion programs and alternative resolution options for lesser offenses to ensure friends and family members can seek help for at-risk individuals without debilitating consequences for that person’s future. Similarly, I will focus on rehabilitation after an individual interacts with the criminal justice system to prevent recidivism.”

What do you think the council should do to accommodate growth in Lynnwood while keeping it an affordable and attractive place to live for current residents?

Lynnwood needs to take a more direct approach at ensuring a unified plan of urban growth throughout the city. A larger involvement by the Housing Authority of Snohomish County would help affordability by shifting housing development from profit-driven corporations into the public sector. By having development reside within public control, the city can have a more unified approach to creating a cohesive city that is focussed around public amenities and transportation infrastructure.

Our city was not built for people, the space between amenities and the separation of commercial and residential reflects the car-dominant development of the post-war era. The arrival of the light rail and the crisscrossing of public transit provides an opportunity to build a city that exists at a human scale.

An attractive city is not one where every resident owns a car, but one where every person wants to take public transit. The city council should embrace walkability and increased density along every transit line. In the long term, the city should focus on building more permanent transit connections that further encourage permanent walkable development along these corridors.”

Learn more about Hall and his campaign at his campaign website: voteTylerHall.com.

 

–Contact Ashley at ashley@myedmondsnews.com.