Evan Smith: Thompson re-elected to a new Lake Forest Park position

By Evan Smith
ShorelineAreaNews Politics Writer

After the Lake Forest Park City Council re-elected Councilman Dwight Thompson (pictured) as the City’s mayor-pro-tem, he became deputy mayor.

That’s because when the Council convened for its first meeting January 14, it not only chose Thompson as its leader, it changed the title of the position.

In Lake Forest Park’s mayor-council government, the elected mayor is not only the City’s chief executive but also the Council’s non-voting presiding officer.

State law requires councils in non-charter cities with mayor-council governments to choose someone to preside over the Council in the mayor’s absence. The cities of Edmonds and Lynnwood call that person council president. Lake Forest Park formerly used the term “mayor- pro-tem,” the term used in council-manager governments in Mill Creek and Mountlake Terrace. Shoreline’s council-manager government uses the term “deputy mayor."

Thompson told me Tuesday that he asked Lake Forest Park’s Council to adopt the term “deputy mayor” because people understand the term more easily than “mayor-pro-tem.”

In the position, Thompson not only presides over the Council in the mayor’s absence, but he also is chairman of thee Council’s rules committee, which sets the Council’s long-term agenda and he appoints committees.

He said that the major challenges facing the Council in the new year are writing a new budget and writing a new tree ordinance to replace the interim ordinance, which expires in June.