Everett Seats First City Council With a Majority of Women

For the first time in the city's nearly 129-year history, women hold the majority on the Everett City Council. The milestone came Monday, January 3, 2022, when new members took their oaths of office at a special meeting at City Hall.

Judge Laura Van Slyck swore in Councilmembers Mary Fosse, Paula Rhyne, Don Schwab, Liz Vogeli and Ben Zarlingo. The five also represent Everett's first geographic council districts. Until recently, every council seat was elected citywide, but voters approved the switch to districts in 2018, and the new system took effect for last year's elections.

Joined by at-large Councilmembers Brenda Stonecipher and Judy Tuohy, the five-woman bloc gives the council a female majority of 5-2. Stonecipher, the longest-serving member, said she was frequently the only woman on the council. "I'm very glad to see us shatter the glass ceiling," she said.

Women also lead the executive branch. Mayor Cassie Franklin, the first woman elected to run City Hall, took the oath for another four-year term Monday. She was not, however, the city's first female mayor. Joyce Ebert held that distinction in 1977, when she filled the last two months of a vacated term. Ebert was also the first woman elected to the council, in 1973. "It's an honor and I'm thrilled to be part of this very historic day," Franklin said, adding that she looked forward to working in close partnership with the council.

Local advocates marked the moment as well. Vicki Roberts-Gassler, board secretary and historian for the League of Women Voters of Snohomish County, told The Daily Herald before the meeting that the group was pleased to see a council with a female majority just 100 years after women gained the vote. "We have no idea whether our foremothers dreamed that it would ever happen or that it would take so long," she said. The league formed in 1920 after ratification of the 19th Amendment, and its county chapter advocated for the creation of Everett's council districts.

Some members felt the change was overdue. About 48.4% of Everett's 111,000 residents are female, according to U.S. Census data. "For a city our size, I feel like we're a little late," Rhyne said after the ceremony. Election records show that 15 women and 36 men have served on the council since 1968, when the city adopted the charter that created its current strong mayor-council government.

Fosse spoke of the personal significance. "Now my daughter sees me up there and my son see that as a norm," she said after the ceremony.

Washington's women have had the right to vote since 1910, and the Legislature marked a century of women among its members in 2013. Statewide, women held almost 40% of municipal offices in 95 cities with populations over 10,000, according to data from the Center for American Women and Politics. As of April, that figure ranked Washington sixth nationally, based on research from the unit of Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Monday's gathering was the council's first in-person meeting since the pandemic took hold across the country. The council planned to return to remote meetings indefinitely beginning Wednesday.