Kirkland Council Announces Kurt Triplett as City Manager Finalist

By on June 2, 2010 in Archived, Featured Slideshow, Government, Headlines


At its June 1 regular meeting, the Kirkland City Council announced Kurt Triplett as the finalist for the position of City Manager.   The City Council interviewed Triplett and Dave Zabell during an Executive Session on May 25.  Compensation will be subject to contract negotiations.  Triplett served as King County’s Interim County Executive (2009), Chief of Staff to County Executive Ron Sims (2003-2009), Deputy Director of King County’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks (1998-2002), and Deputy Chief of Staff under Ron Sims and Gary Locke.    He has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government (2003) and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Stanford University (1989).

For more information about the City Manager’s Office, go towww.ci.kirkland.wa.us/cmo or call 425-587-3001.

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  • Mathew Pruitt

    The right choice! Great job city council!

  • TobyNixon

    Triplett showed some backbone during his brief time as King County Executive, laying out no-nonsense options for what the county needed to do to close its budget gap. Hopefully he will continue to be just as frank with the citizens of Kirkland, city employees, and our city council. We simply must align expenses with revenues and get on a sustainable track.

  • Lena

    Why would Kirkland hire a manager with Kurt's track record? His valient attempts to close the county's budget gaps are dwarfed by the years of his poor decision making and strategies that have left the county with frightening long-term financial obligations that have resulted in an abysmal financial mess. The county's financial problems are far worse than the current economy, and that's a result of Kurt's failure to plan for anything but the rosiest of financial scenarios.

  • Scott_Brady

    Toby,

    There seem to be some inconsistencies between the record you site, and the record that Lena sites in the next post. Do you have any information that substantiates Kurt Triplett's record of being fiscally responsible with the County? I'd like to know more, but can't seem to find much about him online other than anecdotes and biography. If you have some info could you please post a link?

  • TobyNixon

    My comment was focused specifically on what Triplett did during the brief time he was county executive himself. Prior to that, he worked for Ron Sims, and implemented the policies Sims wanted. We have no information on what Triplett's positions were behind closed doors talking amongst Sims' senior advisors. Personally, I don't think we can lay the blame on Triplett for all the failures of Ron Sims and the majority on the county council. I'm very narrowly saying that I hope the Triplett we see as city manager is more like the Triplett we saw when he was interim county executive, and not the Ron Sims mouthpiece. And I'll emphasize again the word “hope”, which doesn't mean “confidence based on experience”. :-)

  • Scott_Brady

    Thank you for sharing that info. My thoughts on the Ron Simms days are unprintable. It wouldn't be fair to pass judgment on Kurt Triplett because he happened to be there then. But it does make me wonder what he did regarding fiscal responsibility at the County, and whether or not his decision making or recommendations contributed to the financial mess the County is in now.

    With some luck the shared “hope” for his abilities and fiscal responsibility will be fact. I will be very interested to see the events that show what Bob Sternoff meant when he said “the goals of the council were just better with Mr. Triplett.” Hopefully “the goals of the council” aren't consistent with the tax-and-spend behavior of the last council. :D

  • TobyNixon

    Personally, I would have liked the council to have used a more open process for selecting the city manager, like what the City of Seattle is doing with their police chief, so that the public could have had the opportunity to ask this kind of question and hear the answer for ourselves. It would have been nice to even have had one public interview session where the public could have observed the questions the council was asking and the answers they were receiving from the manager candidates. Instead, the council conducted the process entirely behind closed doors, except for some limited public input into the criteria the council should use to select the new manager. We can only hope that the council actually did use that public input, and that they did ask tough questions about the candidates' personal principles of fiscal responsibility.