Mike Kahler hopes to win Position 6 on the Auburn City Council to tackle what he considers the city’s two biggest problems — “homeless folks and drugs,” and their effect on business.

“They’re all over Auburn,” he said of the homeless population. “Pull into any shopping center, and they’ve got people sleeping everywhere and trying to get money from you.

“I firmly believe we can’t move forward on anything else until we at least get some kind of handle on those two issues,” Kahler added.

The issues, he said, once plagued the little shopping center at M and East Main where he manages the Auburn Valley Humane Society’s Thrift Store.

No more, he said.

“What we did here is just strictly enforce the no-loitering and no panhandling laws. So why should they come here? They just don’t come here,” Kahler said. “I’m proud to say you can walk around this building any time during business hours and see no panhandlers, no people passed out behind the building any more. So, if we can at least get the daytime business hours under control, I think that’s a big step.

“I mean, we’re not the only thrift store around, and if our customers don’t like the stuff, they can go somewhere else. Same with the grocery store next store. So it’s in our best interest to get a handle on this so we don’t start losing customers to Kent or Federal Way or Covington. They’ll go some other place if the environment is not something they’re comfortable with,” Kahler said.

The problem, he concedes, is enormously complex.

“Given the diversity of the homeless population there’s going to be no one fix-all for everybody, that’s for sure. One-third of them have mental disabilities, 10 percent of them are homeless veterans. It’s a mishmash of everybody out there,” Kahler said.

Kahler will face fellow Auburn resident Larry Brown in the general election race for Position 6, held for the last 27 years by Rich Wagner, who is not running for re-election.

Kahler and his wife, Cindy, moved to Auburn from West Seattle 34 years ago to escape, he said, the exorbitant rent they were paying.

“A friend of mine said, ‘We can get you into a house in Auburn for less than your rent.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s great – where’s Auburn?’ ” Kahler recalled with a laugh.

The couple raised their children here and work in town, she at an Auburn dental practice.

Every chance he gets, he said, he rides his bicycle.

Kahler said he’d been thinking about running for some time, but with kids to raise and a job that often took him out of town, the timing was never right.

“It’s just that, now, the timing is right. I have a job where I can have flexible hours. Our kids are grown and I have a lot of time to work on projects,” Kahler said.

Kahler rounds out the slate of candidates for public office in Auburn. Beginning at the top, incumbent Mayor Nancy Backus will square off against Deputy Mayor Largo Wales and newcomer Bryan Rivera, an activist for making Auburn a sanctuary city, in the Aug. 1 primary to determine whose two names will appear on the general election ballot in November.

The Reporter was unable to reach Rivera in time for this article.

Council incumbents Claude DaCorsi and Yolanda Trout-Manuel will run unopposed.