Covington’s only contested City Council race is between Fawn Sieger, a five year resident of the city, and Councilman Mark Lanza, who is seeking his third term.

Sieger said she decided to run for City Council with the encouragement of her mother and aunts, whom she described as “really into politics and being involved.”

When she saw that none of the incumbents had challengers, Sieger said, she decided that she was going to take it on and see how it panned out.

“I started looking at it just because nobody wanted to go up against these people,” Sieger said. “Then when I started getting into it after I signed up I found out from a lot of citizens that aren’t involved with the Council, but go to a lot of the meetings, (they) are very disappointed with what’s going on. That’s what really got me going after I got involved with it.”

Ultimately she decided to challenge for Position No. 2, not because of any particular beef with Lanza, but to jump into the race.

“It wasn’t anything personal” Sieger said. “I didn’t know anything about any of those guys on the Council.”

Sieger hasn’t had time to do much campaigning and knows that people don’t know much about her, but she wants people to know that she’s particularly concerned about business development in the city.

“Everybody (on the council) has their on personal views and they don’t always think about what’s best for the city,” she said. “They bring in all these wonderful ideas, but, they don’t see that Covington is unique. It’s a small city. What I really want to see is No. 1, the city stop putting limitations on building and design that comes in from developers.”

Sieger is a mechanical engineer who runs a business in Renton and points to her business background as something that could be useful on the Council and a driver for her campaign.

She is concerned about the proposal to eliminate the economic development manager’s position. She believes that having someone who can sell the city is worth protecting and there should be other ways to trim the budget fat.

On the flip side, Sieger believes the city should put its plans to develop its parks and recreation system on the back burner “and get Covington’s economic status built back up.”

Sieger would also like to bring a farmers’ market into Covington.

“It brings in increased revenue, it brings in jobs for people, it brings in social interaction in the city,” she said.

Lanza, who initially ran for City Council eight years ago because he “just didn’t like the way things were going at the time,” is also interested in economic development.

“Right now, cities are really struggling, not just Covington,” he said. “We’re actually weathering the storm much better than other cities that are comparable in size.”

During his time on the Council, Lanza pointed out, the city has been in growth mode.

“We could’ve gone a lot of different ways,” he said. “We could’ve taken the approach Maple Valley did … but I think we’d be paying the price for those types of decisions.”

At this stage, Lanza said the critical thing is to keep the city on good financial ground during the next two or three years. This will allow Covington to weather the storm of the recession no matter how long it takes the economy to recover.

“That plays right into economic development,” he said. “We certainly don’t want economic development to come to a standstill. Those sales tax dollars support services.”

Lanza also has his eye on transportation, pointing to the fact the city has completed four major road projects in eight years. Lanza also noted proposed developments in Maple Valley and Black Diamond could impact Covington.

“A lot of those people are going to be coming through our corridor,” he said. “The key is going to be figuring out how to fund those (transportation) projects.”

Unlike Sieger, Lanza is a proponent of developing the city’s parks and recreation system now.

“There are two projects we’d like to see (get) done,” Lanza said. “One of them is Covington Community Park. The other one is Jenkins Creek Park, which I think could really be a gem in the city.”

But he also has concerns regarding what could happen if Initiative 1033 passes.

“That just throws us a curveball,” Lanza said. “That just changes everything.”

Lanza also wanted to defend the Covington City Council members against some of the assertions made on Sieger’s Web site.

“None of us are on the council for personal gain,” he said. “I’m not doing this for money or any personal gain, we get paid $450 a month. I want to make sure that we have a community that is second to none. That’s one thing I want people to know.”

He encouraged people to visit both his Web site at www.re-electmarklanza.com and Sieger’s site, www.votefawn.com and compare the information presented on them.

Sieger said there is one crucial thing people should understand about her.

“Everybody has their opinions of how things need to be done, but, coming from a business background I recognize that if multiple people came to me with an idea (even) if I don’t agree with it … I’ll look at it,” Sieger said. “Any idea, any opinion on something needs to be recognized and discussed and at least intelligently thought out.”