The city of Washougal will have a new mayor in 2022, and a longtime council member wants the job.
Molly Coston will not seek another term as the chair of Washougal’s city council in November’s general election. Instead she hopes to win voter approval to continue in her current No. 5 position, to which she was appointed in September 2020 after Ray Kutch resigned from the council.
Longtime council member Paul Greenlee will run for election in the No. 1 council position, which was designated as mayor after voters approved a proposition in November 2020.
Greenlee, a council member since 2007, had been considering running for mayor for “at least (the past) eight years.”
“I have the greatest respect for Molly,” he said. “She told me some time ago that she wasn’t going to run for mayor this time, and she wanted to go back to being on council. That created the opportunity. (Previously), I would look at the situation and say, ‘If I run, who else is going to run? Is there a chance they could win? If they did, what would that mean for the city?’ I really looked at what’s best for the city, and that’s what convinced me twice previously that it was not yet time to run. The opportunity is there (this time around) to do more for my city, and I don’t see any downside.”