Following planning board retirement, Stewart says she’ll continue to be voice for environment

Valerie Stewart walks along the Edmonds Marsh boardwalk with former Edmonds High School biology teacher John Cooke in 2014. (Photo by Larry Vogel)

When Valerie Stewart was growing up in New York and New Jersey, nature was her playground. She made a special pond for the 14 frogs she caught, although they all jumped out. She played with toads, placing them in toys cars. “They wouldn’t like it but I thought it was pretty cool,” she recalled. A monarch butterfly would light on her finger and then fly alongside as she ran. “I’m sure it helped that I put honey on my finger,” she added.

“I was hooked on nature; the beginning of a lifelong addiction,” Stewart said.

So it’s no surprise that Stewart, who moved to Edmonds 30 years ago with her husband Craig and two children, has made her mark on a city that prides itself on being committed to environmental causes. She had time to reflect on her legacy recently after finishing her second and final term on the Edmonds Planning Board, which advises the city on regional and local land use planning and zoning issues.

Stewart said she decided to leave the planning board after eight years of service so she could “pull back and allow myself some time to catch up with the rest of my life.” That includes spending more time with her two grandchildren and husband, and taking a genealogy class to trace her family’s roots. And the 67-year-old Stewart — a certified exercise physiologist who has taught physical education and coached high school sports teams throughout her career — also wants to get back to the outdoor sports she loves.

“I’m in really good shape but I have high expectations of my fitness level,” she said with laughter.

After a childhood spent running through the woods and serving as “the neighborhood fun and games organizer,” Stewart saw the connection between environmental preservation and physical activity.

Stewart’s parents were both teachers, and her father later became a city recreation director in northern New Jersey. They fostered a love of both nature and sports in their daughter, who excelled in athletics throughout high school. “We didn’t have sports team for girls then, only intramurals,” Stewart recalled. “I was a majorette and a color guard.”

Even so, Stewart received the school’s top athlete award her senior year, along with academic honors that qualified her for a scholarship to the University of Denver. Her parents were hesitant to let their only child travel that far from home, but Stewart remembers writing them a letter “telling them I really needed to go away and I needed this opportunity to really blossom and see what else is out there.”

She started out as a psychology major, switching to biology and then finally to physical education after realizing how much she was enjoying time outdoors in Denver while attending college. She became an avid skier, stretching out her graduate work over two years so she could spend time as a self-described “ski bum.”

With both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical education, along with undergraduate minors in math and biology, Stewart began her teaching career, starting with a job at a Denver-area private school. She met her future husband, Craig — a college administrator in suburban Chicago — through a mutual friend and eventually quit her job so she could marry him and move to Illinois.

She was able to teach physical education and coach sports at the same college, and the couple welcomed their first child, a daughter, Ali. Soon after, they moved to the Seattle area for jobs at Lakeside School — Craig as the school’s athletic director and Valerie as a teacher. During this time, Stewart gave birth to the couple’s second child, son Clint.

The family moved from Seattle to other locales as Craig Stewart took jobs as a fundraiser for college and preparatory schools in Colorado and Connecticut. Lakeside School took notice of Craig Stewart’s newly acquired fundraising experience and brought him back as the school’s development director, with Valerie returning as well to teach math and physical education at Lakeside Middle School.

Stewart standing in the yard of her Edmonds home, which is a certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat. To be certified, a homeowner must have food, water, shelter and a place for wildlife to raise their young, along with sustainable yard care practices.

They lived in Lake Forest Park but eventually ended up moving to Edmonds in 1986, purchasing a 1930s-era Tudor home in the Edmonds Bowl that reminded Craig of the house where he grew up in Pennsylvania.

“It was well built but lacked energy efficiency,” Stewart noted, adding that she ultimately “greened it up” with environmentally-friendly features after becoming knowledgeable about green building practices.

While Stewart’s passion for environmental issues took root during a childhood of playing in the woods, it blossomed in the late 1990s after she began doing volunteer work with at-risk youth in Seattle. “I realized that kids weren’t getting enough connections with nature, like I did when I was growing up,” Stewart said. It was also easy for Stewart to see the relationship between children who weren’t spending time outside and the increase in youth obesity that she was observing as a teacher. “Less physical activity and less contact with nature — they actually coincide,” she said. “I knew I had to fill that gap somehow.”

By that time, she had quit teaching at Lakeside and had been working with people of all ages — from children through senior citizens — as an exercise physiologist. Her children were grown and out of the house, and she “felt a call to start learning about the environment.”

In 2005, she earned a certificate in environmental law and regulation through a University of Washington continuing education program. She then signed on to teach and do graduate work for a year at IslandWood, a non-profit outdoor learning center located on Bainbridge Island that provides environmental education for 4th-6th graders. “I wanted to connect with city kids who came there for three nights and four days and immerse them in nature.”

Her work at IslandWood also inspired her later to create and run an after-school Habitat Club program at Edmonds’ Westgate Elementary School for five years — a way of giving back to the school that her son attended, she noted.

“I got to the end of that (IslandWood) program and it wasn’t enough,” Stewart recalled. “I was continuously wanting to learn and then shared with people around me what I learned.”

She spent a year becoming certified through the Sustainable Building Adviser program. During one presentation, she was inspired by the remarks of Portland, Ore. transportation planner Peter Hurley. “He said if you really want to know what’s going on, you need to be a public servant,” Stewart said.

So she applied for an opening on the Edmonds Planning Board, where for the past eight years she has immersed herself in a wide range of land-use issues that the advisory board has reviewed, providing recommendations to the Edmonds City Council.

Her work on the planning board drew praise from Chairman Phil Lovell, who said Stewart always took time to research issues and share her findings with fellow board members. During meetings, Stewart was an “excellent listener and responsive to others around her — especially to the board during deliberations,” Lovell said. “She’s very passionate about Edmonds, its preservation, and sustainability for the future.”

Stewart views her time on the planning board with a mix of satisfaction and some frustration. She is proud of the board’s work on the form-based code that the City Council approved in April 2015 for Edmonds’ Westgate area, because it focused on providing incentives for builders to include environmentally friendly amenities.

“I think we did that really well in the face of a lot of comments from the public who didn’t quite understand what we were really driving at,” she said.

But Stewart believes there is still much work ahead for the planning board and the city to further the development of policies that encourage green building practices. “One thing I wish I could have done better is to move the needle further along,” she said.

“It’s very economically smart to build green,” Stewart said. “Operations and maintenance are cheaper, people are healthier, more comfortable and more productive in their workplaces because there’s daylight and better indoor air quality.” She pointed to the much-discussed principal of a “triple bottom line,” which suggests that companies consider not only their financial but social and environmental “bottom lines.”

“Social equity, environment and economics — they tie together,” Stewart said. “Your materials come from the environment, you have to protect it so you have what you need.”

Other Puget Sound cities — including Kirkland, Bainbridge Island and Bellingham — have  incentives that have encouraged green building, and Stewart hopes that over time the City of Edmonds, which is currently working to rewrite its municipal code, will do the same.

In 2009, Stewart tried to set an example by building a 5 Star Built Green home on a lot next to her existing home in Edmonds, but was stymied by a variety of developmental challenges and gave up the effort in 2012 after spending nearly three years and $75,000 on the design and permitting process. “I learned a lot about how this city works and the roadblocks and I’m not faulting them at all, but they weren’t ready for this project,” said Stewart, who kept a blog that chronicled her efforts. “It’s because no one had been able to help them [the city] in advance. The code did not allow them to do the things I wanted to do without major changes and they were willing to try to make those changes but it was going to take a while.”

For now, Stewart pointed to “one simple action” the city could take immediately to encourage more sustainable building practices: “They could expedite permitting for green building projects,” she said. “Shorten the length of time that a developer would have to wait to get their permit.” It’s concept that Stewart said she’s been working on “for years,” and one that she intends to continue advocating for now that she has left the planning board.

That passion for citizen advocacy is clearly a driving force for Stewart, and she has made  numerous contributions citywide in addition to her planning board work, including terms on the Mayor’s Climate Protection Committee, serving two years as co-chair; the Marina Beach Project Advisory Committee; the Parks, Recreation, Open Space Plan Advisory Team and the Project Advisory Committee for the Civic Field Master Plan. She was also nominated in 2014 for the Edmonds’ Kiwanis Club’s Citizen of the Year award.

Edmonds Mayor Dave Earling said that Stewart “has become an important voice in the community on environmental and land use issues,” while City Councilmember Diane Buckshnis described her as “a cherished citizen” who is “a role model, leader and mentor to many.”

Stewart with former Students Saving Salmon Club President Rondi Nordahl at the Dec. 13 Edmonds City Council meeting, where Nordahl received a standing ovation.

In 2014, Stewart completed Citizen Action Training School, a civic engagement and Puget Sound watershed/marine ecology program. To graduate from that program, she was required to complete 100 hours of community service and her thoughts again turned to engaging young people. The result was a project that she called “the highlight” of her work in city government — creating the Students Saving Salmon organization at Edmonds-Woodway High School.

The after-school club was started after Stewart talked with Edmonds-Woodway High School vice principal Geoff Bennett about engaging students in local marine ecology and salmon recovery efforts. Bennett connected Stewart to EWHS honors biology teacher Dave Millette, who offered the use of his classroom after school to hold student meetings. Then Bennett and Millette spread the word to students about the formation of the new organization.

Many students attended the first meeting in September 2014. “It was magical,” Stewart said. She left it to those attending to come up with a name for the club. “One student said ‘Students Saving Salmon’ and another student said, ‘That’s it,'” Stewart recalled.

One of her goals was “to give students a voice in the government process,” and she taught club members how to communicate with government officials — something she had learned to do while on the planning board after realizing the importance of sharing her views with councilmembers. She also taught students how to write articles and create presentations/materials about issues that impact the future of salmon in their community.

As a result, during the past two years students have appeared several times at Edmonds City Council meetings, providing testimony on a variety of council initiatives — including the Shoreline Master Program and critical areas regulations — that could impact marine ecology and salmon recovery. One of those making frequent appearances was the club’s president, Rondi Nordahl, who in early December was chosen by the Snohomish Conservation District Board of Supervisors as its a 2016 Youth Conservation Leader. Now a freshman at Western Washington University, Nordahl returned to the council chambers Dec. 13 to be honored for her accomplishments.

Students Saving Salmon students worked with the city parks officials on the Edmonds Pier rehabilitation project, interviewing fishermen who used the pier and presenting their findings to city staff and consultants. And thanks to a connection through EWHS vice-principal Bennett, they also interviewed retired Edmonds High School biology teacher John Cooke about his efforts to involve his students in Edmonds Marsh preservation issues during the 1970s.

And thanks to the efforts of Edmonds resident Joe Scordino, a retired NOAA fisheries biologist who also graduated from the Citizen Action Training School, the Students Saving Salmon club now has a new project. Stewart and Scordino jointly developed a water quality monthly monitoring program, known as the Stream Team, that is now monitoring the conditions of three Edmonds streams and the Edmonds Marsh.

The students made their first annual report to the City Council in June 2016, and the Stream Team — supervised by Scordino — has received $10,000 in funding to continue its work for 2017. “The city wasn’t collecting water quality data and that was needed,” Stewart said. “Citizens need to know, elected officials need to know what’s going into our creeks for human health and the health of the salmon and wildlife.”

Stewart intends to continue her work with students, noting that they “keep me young.” She may explore expanding the Students Saving Salmon club to other high schools, possibly incorporating the work into the schools’ curriculum. She is also looking at ways to combine her physical fitness and environmental expertise into becoming a “well-being consultant.”

Finally, Stewart intends to promote environmental sustainability practices not only through continuing education of officials at the City of Edmonds and testimony at city council meetings, but also at the state level, through the State Department of Ecology and the governor’s office, with the goal of “making them accountable.”

“I will be back and the community will be hearing from me,” she said.

— Story and photos by Teresa Wippel

  1. Teresa, Thank you for this wonderful profile of Val Stewart. She is both a teacher and a life long learner. I value her contributions to our community as an 8 -year Planning Board member. She will be missed. However, I think she will remain engaged in the environmental issues that are important to her such as the Students Saving Salmon club at the Edmonds Woodway High School.

  2. Teresa– Wonderful write-up on Val; what a foundational background and history contributing to her ongoing efforts in our city. Her energy, commitment, and stamina can’t be equaled in my judgment. We are all fortunate to have her ongoing leadership within the community.

  3. Thank you Teresa on this great write-up for Val. She has been a rock star woman with an environmental goal for me for a very long time and I have learned so much for her. The one thing not captured is her witty sense of humor. We are so fortunate to have her in Edmonds and I am blessed to have her in my life.

  4. Dear Teresa: I, too, extend my thanks to you for your excellent article about Val. I echo the thoughts of Council Member Diane Buckshnis. Our city is truly blessed and thankful for all the good works that Val Stewart has done to make Edmonds a better place. Val is smart, talented, witty (as Ms. Buckshnis commented), hard-working, passionate, humble, sincere and kind.

    I would like to share a quote from Val. Her words reveal who she is.
    “I am not interested in being given credit for anything; I merely want good things to happen. If I can plant a seed or encourage someone with special talents and knowledge to speak on behalf of a beneficial cause, then that’s what I’ll do. I have learned that by giving people, especially youth, power in their voice means that I done a good job as a citizen. What’s important is to be respectful, listen, and be compassionate. Everyone has a valid point. It comes from their own framework of experience. What we all need to do as citizens is encourage discussion about various issues and share educational information so all citizens can learn enough to understand how decisions can affect everyone, not just themselves. Somehow, we need to see benefit in the greater good, learn how to live in harmony with nature, and still have what humans need and future generations need. It’s a dialogue that needs to be open and understanding. Building relationships with people makes that kind of communication possible.”

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