Editor:

I am delighted Janelle Cass has announced her candidacy to run for State Senate in the 21st Legislative District. She has the credentials and temperament to best serve in this capacity. She will bring rational thinking, consensus building, and problem solving to Olympia, which seems to be out of touch with citizens.

Janelle is an Air Force Academy graduate. Her background and area of expertise is in civil and environmental engineering. She is analytical and will not jump to conclusions in decision making. She is an independent thinker, and you will not ever find her going along to get along. She is principled and a person of integrity.

Janelle is Janelle no matter what the issue, which day of the week it is, or who is asking the question. Your name and title don’t figure into how she will decide an issue or how she will vote. She will protect the interests of all constituents. She will look at the data, ask the questions that need to be asked, weigh the pros and cons, bring in the stakeholders, and then make a decision.

Janelle is a business owner, Ohana Hyperbarics. She knows what it means to look at business finances and decide on how dollars need to be spent. She won’t be writing legislation or supporting projects that needlessly spend your tax dollars.

Janelle can boast of many accomplishments but one I find most impressive is when she worked on a project with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As an environmental engineer for the FAA Las Vegas Metroplex Airspace Redesign Project, she experienced the challenges of bringing together the FAA and the National Parks Dept to agree on how airplanes should fly over sensitive areas of the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park. Initially, the organizations wanted entirely different outcomes. With diplomacy and perseverance Janelle was able to encourage FAA management, FAA unions, and the airlines to develop a collaborative relationship with a wide variety of invested organizations. These included the National Parks Dept, Tribal Nations -primarily the Hualapal Tribe, State Historic Preservation Offices, the State Dept of Ecology, the Dept of Defense at Nellie AFB, elected officials, the public, and others. This massive collaborative effort resulted in reducing an average of 100 flights per day over the Grand Canyon and eliminated fights over Zion National Park altogether.

This example demonstrates Janelle’s ability to bring a variety of organizations, and people with differing opinions and desired outcomes together, to problem solve so in the end a decision is reached that benefits and serves all constituents.

You will have the opportunity to get to know Janelle, ask questions of her as this race progresses. You too will be impressed.

Theresa Campa Hutchinson
Edmonds