Please join me in supporting Kim Hendrickson for the at-large position on Bainbridge Island’s City Council.

As the chair of the island’s recently decimated Housing Trust Fund, I am hopeful that with Kim joining the council, community conversations about housing issues will gain overdue support.

I met Kim through the Housing Resources Board and found her knowledge, strategic thinking and mutual passion a great asset to me, the trust, as well as the community.

She has given me hope that citizens, businesses and government can together create housing options to include renters, our valuable work force that can’t afford the island, young families and those of us of modest means.

She is a good person to know when you want something to happen. She’s worked hard for small businesses, including our local vintners.

Even when it’s controversial, such as the liveaboard community, she created a positive, celebratory occasion open to everyone.

She’s quick, curious, modest about her achievements and has a delightful sense of humor – the essential oils for the machinery of government to run.

On Kim’s blog http://hendricksonforcouncil.blogspot.com, she lists her “dislikes” and among them are cynicism toward government, underutilized talent in our citizens and city employees, timidity, bullying and pretension.

These dislikes are the very qualities that have often gotten in the way of making life on this small island positive and possible, rather than frustrating and litigious.

This is Kim’s opportunity to make the contribution I know she will make to our community and our chance as voters to make it happen.

Barbara Clarke

Bainbridge Island