PORT ANGELES — A public-interest lawyer has announced his candidacy for the four-year Port Angeles City Council Position 3 seat held by Mayor Patrick Downie, who is not running for re-election.
Lindsey Schromen-Wawrin, 37, is a Port Angeles native and Gonzaga University School of Law graduate who was a Democratic Party precinct committeeman and ran unsuccessfully for the Clallam County Charter Review Commission in 2014, he said Thursday.
His clients include a group in Spokane that is trying to prohibit fossil-fuel trains from passing through the city because of safety and global warming concerns, he said.
Schromen-Wawrin, an immediate past president of the Clallam County Bar Association, also represents Save Tacoma Water.
The water protection group is appealing a court decision that disallowed it from putting forward an initiative that would have required major water users to obtain voter approval for using more than 1 million gallons daily of city water.
An Oberlin College graduate with a degree in environmental studies, Schromen-Wawrin said he will vote against continuing to fluoridate city water in the Nov. 7 election. Fluoridation of city water was stopped in August. An advisory vote about whether to make that permanent is on the general election ballot.
“The city should listen to the people of Port Angeles,” he said. “I use fluoride intentionally every day, but that’s different than water fluoridation for everyone.”
Schromen-Wawrin said he also is against Port Angeles reverting to second-class-city status, which the city council agreed this week to place on the Nov. 7 ballot.
“I think the people of Port Angeles will rightly vote it down,” he said. “We shouldn’t be giving up home-rule power.”
A 1998 Port Angeles High School graduate and 2013 Oberlin graduate, Schromen-Wawrin worked as an AmeriCorps environmental educator-volunteer at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center, an Olympic Park Institute field-science educator and a science education coordinator for the institute in collaboration with the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe before attending law school.
“I am passionate about public policy and how we create the legislative structure in our city,” he said.
Schromen-Wawrin is married to Carolyn Wilcox, owner of Experience Olympic, a wildlife tour business.
Filing week for the Nov. 7 election is May 15-19.
Positions held by City Councilmen Brad Collins, Dan Gase and Lee Whetham also are up for election.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@ peninsuladailynews.com.
