Edmonds City Council candidate Ron Wambolt may have been the headliner at his Thursday night campaign kickoff at the Edmonds Conference Center, but he brought in some big-name warm-up acts as well.

Both Edmonds Mayor Dave Earling and former Edmonds Mayor and current Deputy Snohomish County Executive Gary Haakenson took to the podium on Wambolt’s behalf, urging those in the crowd to get behind the retired Fluke Corporation senior vice president who served one council term before being defeated in the August 2009 primary by current City Councilmember Adrienne Fraley-Monillas.

Haakenson noted that when he was mayor and Wambolt served on the council, “the one thing I could always count on with Ron, was that he did his homework. He was consistent; you always knew where he was coming from. You knew Ron’s path.”

“l’m here to say tonight, he’s the man for the job,” Haakenson added.

Earling praised Wambolt, who regularly attends and testifies at council meetings as a citizen, for his deep knowledge of city issues and his ability to articulate them. It’s important to elect councilmembers “who have a bigger and broader view of our community,” said Earling, noting that some on the current city council “would simply like to pull a zipper over the heads and come back in 15 years and find out that it’s Mayberry.

“We can’t afford to be Mayberry, folks,” Earling added. “It’s not that sweet and innocent. We need to make big decisions and we can’t have people making small judgments as we seek big decisions. Bringing someone like Ron Wambolt on the council will indeed clear the air, and I hope all of you will support him.”

Also speaking on Wambolt’s behalf was Edmonds Police Foundation board member Darlene Stern, who praised Wambolt for his knowledge of issues involving all Edmonds’ neighborhoods, from Five Corners to Highway 99 to Westgate, and his connection to the city. “He walks around his neighborhood,” Stern said. “He’s always downtown. He shops in local stores; he eats in local restaurants.”

When he took the podium, Wambolt noted he does not have the “deep pockets” of his opponent, Fraley-Monillas, who has ties “to unions and a political party,” adding: “I don’t have an attachment to anyone; I am independent.”

Wambolt also offered some solutions the city’s budget troubles, caused by the recent recession and the related drop in property tax collections.

For starters, It’s likely that the City Council will vote to put a parks levy on the November ballot that — if approved — will raise the average property tax bill by $10 a month to fund city parks, Wambolt said. As a result, that would free up money in the city’s real estate excise tax fund that can be used for long-delayed street repairs.

He also pointed to another way to increase the city’s tax base: by attracting additional multifamily housing. More dense development, in the form of condos and apartment buildings, is important for a couple of reasons, he said. A larger population will keep local businesses viable, he noted, “but we also need a denser population to comply with the state’s Growth Management Act, which says we have to grow the population of Edmonds by 5,000 people by the year 2025.”

As an example of his commitment to doing his homework, Wambolt told the audience that he took it as a personal challenge when one particular city councilmember poo-poohed the idea of condos as economic development and stated “that even if the city doubled all the property tax that we get from every condo in the bowl, we’d only grow our revenues by $360,000 a year,” he recalled.

“I knew it had to be more than that but I didn’t know how much. So my wife and I walked around Edmonds and got the address of every condominium…then I went home and analyzed the tax records of every one of those buildings,” Wambolt said. His findings: Edmonds has “a little over a thousand” condominiums located in 110 buildings, and the total property tax that they paid in 2011 was $5 million.” Of that, Edmonds received about $1 million, he added.

He pledged to work closely with city staff, developers and fellow councilmembers to get multifamily projects moving.

Wambolt was a first-term councilmember when he lost his Position 3 seat in the August 2009 primary to both Fraley-Monillas and Lora Petso. Fraley-Monillas went on to defeat Petso in the November 2009 general election, but Petso was appointed the following year to fill the Position 7 seat left vacant with the resignation of Councilmember Dave Orvis. Fraley-Monillas is a retired adult training program supervisor from Fircrest School.

Wambolt currently sits as a private citizen on the City Parking Committee, the Community Technical Advisory Committee  and the Highway 99 Task Force. He also serves on the city’s ad hoc committee studying the feasibility of a Metropolitan Park District.