Coston retained as Washougal mayor

The mayor-council form features a mayor, elected at-large, who serves as the city’s chief administrative officer; and a council, elected either at-large or from districts, which is responsible for formulating and adopting city policies.

The council-manager format consists of an elected city council, which is responsible for policy making; and a professional city manager, appointed by the council, who is responsible for administration. The city manager is directly accountable to, and can be removed by, the council. Although mayors in council-manager cities have no administrative or executive duties, they do serve as the chair of the city council and often play a prominent political leadership role.

According to a study issued by the Seattle-based Municipal Research and Services Center in March 2018, 43 percent of similarly sized Washington cities had council-manager governments.

“Reflecting national trends, the mayor-council form remains the most common form of government found in Washington cities and towns, particularly among the smaller jurisdictions and for some of the very largest,” the report stated. “For the smallest cities and towns with relatively few services and more modest budgets, the mayor-council form is perhaps the most practical and economical form of government. For the very largest cities, the mayor-council form remains a popular choice.”

After the change, Coston became the Washougal council’s eighth member and was selected to continue as mayor in November 2018.

“She took the change as a given and moved forward. She was very good about that,” Greenlee said. “The change was less traumatic and difficult than I expected, partially because David had been (city administrator) for eight years, and Molly had been mayor for a year, and they developed a good relationship, and they worked together to make a smooth transition.”

Scott said Coston “was very gracious” and “did a great job” during the transitional period.

“She was getting used to the role (the way it was), and then that role changed. Anytime you go through that, you have to work through it, and she did,” he said. “She’s been very supportive for me as the manager. She has adapted, in my opinion, very well. She is still ‘Mayor Molly.’ The Mayor Coston before and the Mayor Coston after, in terms of who she is and how she engages, didn’t change at all.”

And now, not only does she actually like the current form of government better than the previous one, but she feels like she still has an amount of authority that she’s comfortable with.

“There’s no doubt in my mind (this is a better form of government for Washougal),” she said. “And whether I’m a strong mayor or not a strong mayor, I’m still a mayor, and I am often the point person for people that want to come to me with a discussion about issues. I still feel like it’s a leadership position. Dave calls me ‘the first among peers’ on the council.”

From ‘nomadic’ life to community engagement

Coston’s personal and professional lives have been filled with varied opportunities and experiences which have helped her in her role as a public official.

“She’s a very interesting woman with quite an interesting background,” Scott said.

Coston was born in central New York and moved with her family to Tucson, Arizona, when she was 13 years old. She graduated from the University of Arizona with bachelor of science degrees in biology and organic chemistry, and then worked in the school’s biochemistry research department. She then served as a researcher/tester for the state of Arizona’s public health department before leaving the science field to become a business owner, operating a bar/restaurant, then a trucking company, both in Tucson.

But for the bulk of her career, she worked for Nortel Networks, a global telecommunications company. She started “at the bottom, as a tech,” and worked her way up to a senior project manager position, managing large telecommunication projects in Alaska, Micronesia (where she lived for two years) and the Pacific Northwest.

“I would have anywhere from one or two people to 60 people working for me, and 95 or 96 percent of them were male,” she said. “People have asked me, ‘How much flack did you run into?’ Surprisingly, not a lot. I grew up with five brothers, so I’m very accustomed to handling those kinds of relationships.”

Coston and her husband, fellow Nortel employee Phil Harris, moved to Washougal in November 2000. Coston immediately became active in the community, joining the Camas-Washougal Rotary Club and the Columbia Gorge Refuge Stewards.

She was elected to the Washougal city council in 2005 and served for six years. She also represented east Clark County for three years on the Vancouver-based Regional Transportation Council board of directors, chairing that board in 2010.

“When I worked so much, I really had no connection to my community,” she said. “I was in Alaska probably 60 percent of the time. We (lived in) Micronesia. We had a 35-foot fifth-wheel, and if we were in the states, we lived in that, if we weren’t in the states, we didn’t have upkeep on anything. It was nomadic, in a way, but it was great. I don’t regret a single moment of that.

“But although I loved the work, I had no local connection to even the neighbors around me or the community that I lived in,” she continued. “When we moved to Washougal, I said, ‘Here’s the community I’m going to become engaged in.’ This is an incredibly compassionate place. The people have stayed really friendly. When people talk about the ‘small-town feel,’ that’s really kind of what it is — that openness to actually engage with other people that you may not even know. That’s becoming rarer and rarer as we urbanize.”