After three terms as Mayor of Auburn, Pete Lewis has decide not to seek another term.  This means we will elect a new Mayor in November.  Nancy Backus is the clear choice among the candidates seeking the office.  Nancy is smart, experienced, and has a long record of community service in Auburn.

I have lived next door to Nancy and her family for the past 10 years and feel fortunate to call her a friend.  Nancy, her husband Kemon, and her daughter Alexis (Lucky) are some of the finest people you will ever meet and will make our city proud as our “first family”.

Nancy graduated from Auburn High School in 1979 FIRST in her class.  We were talking to Nancy about this the other day and she said she had a perfect 4.0 grade point through both Junior and Senior High School.  She said, “I almost got an A minus once”.  This speaks not only to Nancy’s intelligence but also her work ethic.  Imagine the dedication to not slip up even once.  That is the Nancy Backus I have come to know.  If you have Nancy on your team, your odds of winning just went up dramatically.

After High School, Nancy went on to earn a degree in Accounting and has worked for the Boeing Company for 24 years in finance-related roles.  The city of Auburn has over 350 employees and annual budgets approaching $200 million dollars.  I believe it is essential to have someone at the helm with sound financial skills to make sure Auburn, which is in good financial health today, doesn’t end up becoming the Stockton (in bankruptcy) of tomorrow.

Nancy has been a City Council Member for the past 10 years.  She also has a long history of service to our community.  She has served on the board of the Valley Regional Fire Authority and been the President of the Washington Elementary PTA.  She recently retired as President of the Miss Auburn Scholarship Program after serving in that program for 33 years.  I was a board member during a few years of Nancy’s tenure.  It was here I got to see her leadership style firsthand.  Nancy isn’t someone that needs the spotlight to be on her.  She is happy to see her team shine.  Under her leadership the Miss Auburn Scholarship Program became the largest local pageant in the Miss America system, in terms of scholarship dollars awarded, in the entire United States.  The program is responsible for granting hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to young women in the Auburn community. 

Who else thinks Nancy would do a great job?  I think it is very telling that our current Mayor, Pete Lewis, along with the entire City Council (with the exception of her opponent John Partridge) have endorsed her.  These people have worked with Nancy over the last decade and know she is the right person for the job.  

She has also recently received the endorsement of Congressman Dave Reichert.  She has the endorsement of many others in the Auburn community you can see listed on her campaign website at: http://nancybackus.com/site/endorsements

Let’s consider her two opponents for a second.  I can’t tell you much about Scot Pondelick.  I understand he is a military veteran and we should be thankful for his service to our country.  His lack of any political or management experience means he is a big unknown.  Pacific took a chance on a “write-in” candidate a few years ago and has been in a state of chaos every since.  I don’t think that “on the job training” is the appropriate path for someone leading a city of our size.

I met John Partridge several years ago when his daughter ran for and won the Miss Auburn title.  I like John.  He is a nice man and has served in his community in the Lions and recently as a City Council Member. John runs an insurance agency in Federal Way. I don’t think that is adequate preparation for running a city with 350 employees.  John has served on the City Council since 2010 and evidently his fellow City Council Members also don’t believe he is prepared for the job as Mayor as not a single one of them have endorsed him.

Nancy Backus is the clear and obvious choice for our next Mayor of Auburn and I hope you will join me in supporting her.

Dan Diesso

I have long been an Internet Explorer user as my primary browser.  From time to time I have tried others, but I have always seemed to migrate back to IE.

Last week I was having some problems with the dashboard in Tumblr.  Several items didn’t render properly and when I tried to edit a theme, it would just hang and never complete the save.

I decided to try installing Chrome and instantly all my problems went away.  All of a sudden several things that didn’t seem too intuitive in the Tumblr dashboard were much clearer.

I started using both browsers over the next few days and found that several other sites I frequently visit rendered much nicer in Chrome.  

One of the things I liked best about Chrome is that it has integrated spell checking.  I got into the habit of drafting my Facebook posts in Word and then copying and pasting them into Facebook in order to catch typos.  I immediately noticed that while using Chrome misspelled words were presented with the red squiggly underline we have all become accustomed seeing in Word and many other programs. Right click on the red line and the list of potential properly spelled words is available for selection.  That feature alone convinced me to switch as it saves me lot of time and prevents misspelled words from making there way into my work.

There are several other nice features, including presenting your tabs at the very top of the interface.  Some things, including how favorites are presented, I prefer in IE, but overall I’m very happy with Chrome and it has become my primary browser for now.

KTM Zero Emission Motorcycle

KTM has announced two really cool “emission” free motorcycles.  Although these bikes are electric powered, calling them “emission” free is a stretch since most of our electricity is produced by coal fired plants.  What they don’t produce that is really cool is NOISE.  In the last decade 4-stroke engines have replaced 2-stroke engines because they produce far less pollution.  The only problem has been they have created a serious noise problem.  Although I don’t see electric motorcycles performing on par with 4-strokes anytime soon, they could open up riding in urban areas where the noise level of the conventional 4-strokes is prohibitive.