Two will square off this November for Oak Harbor’s top office. Hoping for a second term is Mayor Jim Slowik and eager to unseat him is City Councilman Scott Dudley.

Both are businessmen and share membership at the same or similar community groups. Each has past and present experience in elected office and both list job creation among their top priorities.

Neither wants to see the new  wastewater treatment plant built at Windjammer Park and both are interested in seeing some type of public pier built at Flintstone Park to accommodate visiting boaters.

In fact, when stacked side-by-side their backgrounds and long-term goals share many similarities. Yet, in other areas, especially those concerning the day-to-day operations of city government, they are as different as they are alike.

And with controversial issues, such as the highly debated and publicized SE Pioneer Way Improvement Project, which has served to polarize the community behind one candidate or another, this is turning out to be of the most hotly contested mayor’s races to hit Oak Harbor in years.

The candidates

Slowik, 62, has called Oak Harbor home for nearly 30 years. The long-time businessman is the former owner of one new car dealership and a manager of two others. He spent nine years working as a vice president for Whidbey Island Bank in its dealer department and is the current owner of his own used car dealership, Slowik Motors.

After a five-year run on the Oak Harbor School District’s board, two of which he served as president, Slowik ran for mayor because he felt he could provide leadership and direction that would lead to things getting done.

Nearly four years later, Slowik said he’s proud of all that’s been accomplished. At the top of the list is SE Pioneer Way, an improvement project that has been discussed  for about 35 years but with little or no progress.

Largely an infrastructure project aimed at the long overdue replacement of utility lines, it served the dual purpose of revitalizing the heart of the city’s downtown shopping district with new sidewalks, landscaping, public art, and burying utility lines underground.

Slowik’s also proud of improvements to the city’s fresh water supply system. Since he took office, three water mains have been replaced and electric water meters installed at homes. Collectively, they have whittled down annual water loss from 8 percent to just 1 percent.

“We’re saving roughly 48 million gallons of water a year,” Slowik said. “That equates to about 23 days of water that the city used to have to pay for.”

Dudley, 44, has lived in Oak Harbor for the past 11 years. Also a businessman, he has spent more than 20 years working as a financial advisor. While living in Rainier, Dudley owned and operated his own small business and has spent the past 16 years with Edward Jones, a financial advice company.

Elected in 2009, Dudley is in the middle of his first term on the city council. However, he also has prior experience in public elected office. He served one term, from 1995 to 1998, on the Rainier City Council.

During his 2009 campaign, Dudley told the Whidbey News-Times the city was moving in the right direction, that he didn’t have an agenda nor an ax to grind. He said he wouldn’t roll over either, that he has “no problem rocking the boat if the boat needs to get rocked.”

Well, he’s done quite a bit of rocking, particularly with the Pioneer Way project. From day one, when he called for a revisiting of the streets approved one-way design, Dudley has been a bullhorn for project critics.

When his arguments failed to hold sway, he attempted to cripple the project by attacking various funding sources. He led the charge in asking the county to rescind a $1 million grant and brought concerns about other discretionary types of funding to the attention of state regulators.

Since Dudley took office, he has often been the sole dissenting vote on agenda items before the council. Although some criticize it as political grandstanding, Dudley said his voting record has nothing to do with his decision to run for mayor. Rather, he said he’s hoping to address a host of concerns, from fiscal responsibility to transparency and open government.

“I think we can significantly improve the city of Oak Harbor,” Dudley said.

The future

After four years in office, Slowik said he’s only made a dent in the things he wants to accomplish. While he focused heavily on water and downtown projects in his first term, if awarded the chance, he will turn his attention to needed road work.

“Our streets are in really bad shape,” he said.

But first and foremost, Slowik wants to concentrate on job creation. In today’s struggling economy, he said it should be the number one focus of all elected officials, from the White House to city government.

Currently, his efforts are focused on helping Freeland-based Nichols Brothers Boat Builders set up a satellite facility on the Seaplane Base. The project is time sensitive and faces a series of obstacles but stands to create about 100 jobs.

Dudley has been quick to blast Slowik for lack of action, saying the opportunity will slip by if the city drags its feet. Late last month, he proposed the city look into funding a feasibility study of the area. He supports paying the entire $40,000 tab and a proposal from city staff is expected soon.

However, Slowik hasn’t been idle. He petitioned the Council of Governments to fund the study months ago but with no luck and he’s spoken personally with base officials. More recently, he met privately with Nichols’ leaders. While it’s not moving as fast as he’d like, Slowik said these things take time.

“You’re not making a back-room deal, you’re making a public-private partnership,” he said.

Slowik points to the success of Waste Management, a regional garbage hauler that established a call center in Oak Harbor in 2008. Persuading them to come to town wasn’t easy and required a lot of effort on his part, but the end result was worth it as its created about 160 jobs, he said.

Slowik also wants to revisit the idea of a pier at Flintstone Park. Funding for the long-planned-for municipal pier project remains elusive, but some type of overnight moorage for visiting boaters should be considered, he said.

The marina itself is a top-notch facility, but many boaters will skip it simply because it’s located too far from any stores. A dock at the foot of Oak Harbor’s downtown shopping district would allow the city to tap into a vast boating market, such as the one enjoyed by Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

Finally, Slowik said he would like to improve communication with the public. Issues over the past year have made it clear that the city has a public relations problem.

“I’m a bit embarrassed about it really,” Slowik said.

He is strongly considering hiring, or appointing an existing employee, as a city spokesman. While the mayor and other staff would still be available for comment, the person could help provide regular information in the form of news releases or regular emails concerning city affairs.

Funding for the position would come from the mayor’s budget.

Dudley agrees there is an information gap, saying he is for “anything we can do to improve communication.” If elected, he promised to create a city Facebook page, a more user-friendly website and tackle the city’s standing committee meetings.

Currently, the meetings are held in locations scattered around town and at different times, some of which begin at 7 a.m. Dudley is promising to begin televising the meetings and work toward having all the meetings held at City Hall and at more convenient times.

According to Slowik, the meetings aren’t televised now due to expense and the locations were selected based on convenience to city staff. Having them all at City Hall would be a disruption in their day. Finally, the times of the meetings aren’t set by the mayor but by the chairman, who is always a council member.

Dudley argues that the priorities are mixed up, that the meetings should be convenient for the public, not those paid to serve it.

The mayoral challenger also promised to focus on economic development. He proposed creating a strategic committee, composed of non-paid members of the community, to identify businesses and industries to pursue in the interest of job creation.

He attacked Slowik’s record, saying not nearly enough jobs have been created in the past four years. Dudley said Slowik shouldn’t get any credit for Waste Management, because county and city officials had worked on the deal prior to Slowik’s efforts.

However, a company spokeswoman told the Whidbey News-Times in 2008 that “solid support from the mayor’s office” was one of the many factors for their decision to locate in Oak Harbor rather than in alternative communities.

Dudley said greater fiscal responsibility is also needed, specifically in the area of contract negotiation. He points to the $1-million contract awarded to an engineering firm to help select the site of a wastewater treatment plant. He claims the city didn’t do enough to see if it could have gotten a better price elsewhere.

If elected mayor, Dudley promised to start reducing city expenses by chopping his own salary. The mayor currently makes $51,408 and he plans to reduce it by 20 percent, about $10,300.

Finally, Dudley said the mayor should do a better job of holding city employees accountable. Although he declined to identify anyone in particular, he said that he would be meeting with department heads and conducting reviews as soon as he takes office.

“There will be changes,” Dudley said. “You can count on that.”

Election hurdles

While there’s a lot of speculation about who’s going to win at the polls, both candidates face considerable challenges.

Without a doubt, the past two years have been the toughest of Slowik’s term. Controversy over SE Pioneer Way’s one-way configuration has landed hardest on his doorstep, even though it was the city council who made the final decision.

The discovery of Native American remains, and the revelation that the city had been pre-warned of an existing nearby archaeological site but chose not to act, has compounded the problem. While there are many proponents for the project, the issue has certainly created some Dudley supporters.

Slowik took heat last year for a dispute over standing committee rules as well. The issue, which centered on the noticing of public meetings, went all the way to state Attorney General’s Office. The agency ruled that newly adopted city policies did not comply with the Open Public Meetings Act.

While the contested rules had been adopted by the city council — Dudley was opposed — Slowik took most of the blame as the decision was based on the recommendation of city staff. Slowik promised to abide by the state’s recommendation from the beginning, and after the ruling, proposed the city council remove the offending rules, which it did.

Finally, Slowik’s decision to abscond with one of his old campaign signs from the window of a critical downtown merchant earned him a “Schrammie” from Ken Schram of KOMO  News. Although the sign had been in the window for years, it had been defaced and Slowik said he decided to take it back. Some say it wasn’t his sign to take but the police chief said there was nothing illegal about Slowik’s move.

Dudley has a few black eyes of his own. Certainly the most widely discussed in the community, especially among his critics, concerns his filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy court in March of 1997.

Dudley said he has no secrets about the issue, saying it was a particularly challenging financial time in his life. His then wife was going to school full time, they had two young children, and he had a fledgling business.

“I know what it’s like to struggle,” Dudley said.

He points out that Chapter 13 bankruptcy is a reorganization of debt, not a Chapter 7 filing, which is basically a declaration of one’s intent to permanently abandon all outstanding financial obligations. He also said that was a number of years ago, that he now enjoys a “six-figure” income, and is the performance leader for Edward Jones for the entire region.

Far less concerning, though it may be troublesome at the polls, is the reputation Dudley has earned as a “naysayer.” His record of voting against the status quo has led many to question whether a Dudley administration would really result in the same forward progress and completion of long standing projects accomplished by Slowik.

Despite the hurdles standing between the candidates and election, both Dudley and Slowik say the race will be close but each believes he will emerge victorious come November.

“I think I’m going to win this election,” Slowik said.

“I think the incumbent is going to be surprised,” Dudley said.