Saying she wants to restore a sense of civility and community to local government, former two-term city council member Annette Stollman has announced her candidacy for the North Ward seat of Norm Wooldridge, who is retiring from the council.

“Politics is one thing, personal relations are another,” Stollman said. “You don’t have to be be hostile towards people when you disagree with them.”

The 67-year-old Dolphin Drive resident said that council service was fun during the infancy of all-island government and that it could be enjoyable again.

“The council needs to establish rules of behavior for itself, and for dealing with staff and the administration,” she said. “Government is part of the community, and we need people in government to feel like it’s a great thing to be part of that team.”

The 16-year island resident was active in the all-island government movement, then served on the council from 1991-1997 as Annette Lancey.

She lost to Liz Murray in 1997, but said that race is an example of how she believes small-town politics can be conducted.

“The voters preferred her views to mine that year, but Liz and I were friends before that campaign, during it and afterwards,” she said.

Stollman said that with the turnover at City Hall, electing council members who can contribute to government’s collective institutional memory is particularly useful.

“I was on the council that passed the Comprehensive Plan, the Shoreline Master Program and worked on the Winslow Master Plan, and I have a feeling for what we intended,” she said.

Stollman, who always served on the council’s land-use committee, said the city today is trying to over-legislate land use issues, provoking citizen opposition.

“If we assume we have to legislate everything, people get angry,” she said.

Stollman said she favors greater use of performance-based standards, where an objective is set out and people are given flexibility and encouragement in meeting it, rather than given a strict set of rules to follow.

“We should assume from the beginning that people want to do the right thing,” she said.

“Instead of passing rules about how many trees you need to have on your shoreline, let’s have a group of staff members that can work with each homeowner on how to make their shoreline property more environmentally friendly.”

A former housing activist and community organizer in Detroit, Stollman taught anthropology at several colleges, and holds a paralegal certificate from George Washington University.

On Bainbridge, she has been a board member of Helpline House, the Arts and Humanities Council, the Bainbridge Island Land Trust and the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, and is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Bainbridge Island Historical Society.

She now raises sheep on her north-end farm.

Stollman sees the proliferation of lawsuits against the city as an indication that people don’t feel connected to their government, and that the art of compromise is being lost.

“We need to let people feel they are being listened to,” she said. “The perfect is the enemy of the good, and we need to settle for the good.”