Carnation city manager, new mayor discuss 2025 goals

The city’s priorities include a SR 203 roundabout and a better Tolt Dam alarm.

When Adair Hawkins moved to Carnation with her husband and children in 2016, she quickly noticed it wasn’t a walkable city. She ran in 2019 for City Council with one priority: better sidewalks.

Five years later, she’s the mayor of Carnation, and she continues to fight for better infrastructure, as well as things like public safety, affordable housing and local business growth.

“I like really listening to others, instead of me just charging forward,” she said.

Hawkins, a dental hygienist full time, became mayor on Jan. 7 when her fellow council members voted her in. Carnation has a council-manager form of government, where the elected council works closely with the appointed city manager to carry out policies. The city manager is the executive of the city, while the mayor is a councilmember who has been chosen by council to represent the city for ceremonial purposes.

Hawkins said she was interested in leading the council in the role of mayor because she wants to help ensure council processes are fair and equitable.

“It was my idea that the mayor should not be the head of any committees, and that’s a new thing,” Hawkins said. “That way everyone has an equal voice. We’re looking for more equality and less steamrolling.”

Equality, to Hawkins, is listening to the concerns of each council member and facilitating their ideas. As a whole, the council’s current priorities include infrastructure improvements, public safety, climate resilience, affordable housing and financial equity.

A lot of the council’s goals can be tied back to infrastructure and public transportation. Hawkins says local businesses would be healthier if they could more easily find and hire part-time and shift workers. Those workers would be more willing to work in Carnation if King County Metro brought back its bus route from Redmond to central Snoqualmie Valley. If there were more bus routes in the Valley, developers would be more likely to build low-income housing.

Having more bus routes would decrease traffic. And both the buses and the traffic would benefit if Carnation finally got its long-awaited roundabout at State Route 203 and NE Tolt Hill Road, an intersection that is notorious for collisions.

Members of Carnation City Council have been fighting for a roundabout for several years, but since the intersection is outside city limits, they can only do so much.

“It’s like pushing a rock up a hill, and we’re still pushing it up and advocating on all fronts,” said City Manager Rhonda Ender. “It is a vital safety improvement for this community on multiple levels.”

In addition to daily driving, Ender said a roundabout is needed to help residents quickly evacuate in the case there is a breach of the Tolt Dam, an event that would quickly flood the city.

The Tolt Dam has been a hot topic for the council in recent years. After the alarm was falsely set off eight times since 2020, many residents have grown distrustful of the system.

“As a citizen, I feel like there’s either apathy or untrust because of the alarm system,” Hawkins said. “Even though the dam is safe, the alarm system isn’t reliable.”

Seattle Public Utilities, which operates the dam, hired a panel of independent, third-party experts to review the Tolt Dam Early Warning System, and the group’s report is expected sometime this year. Until the panel is done, the Early Warning System will remain turned off.

In the meantime, residents can get emergency information from King County emergency alerts, television and radio. In addition to the audible Early Warning System, there is a wireless system that alerts cellphones and a reverse 911 system that would alert landline phones.

“That is one of the biggest things that we continue to work with,” Ender said. “We are anxious to see what that assessment brings back in terms of recommendations for that system.”

Regardless of the task at hand, Ender and Hawkins agreed their approach is always servant leadership.

“My goal is really to create a culture of ‘yes,’” Ender said. “Really being able to do things for the residents of the community, I think is a joyful thing to be able to do.”