John Holman announced on Monday that his name will be on the fall ballot for a second, four-year term on the Auburn City Council this fall.

Holman, a retired police officer, was part of the 2102 freshman class that today numbers councilmembers Largo Wales, who is seeking a second term, and Wayne Osborne, who is not.

Deputy Mayor Holman, former chairman of the planning and community development committee, is chairman of the council study sessions, which as of Jan. 1,2015 replaced the committee system, and a member of the Seattle King County Economic Development Board.

Underneath the titles, Holman is a careful scholar of all things city-related, brimming with facts and figures about what has worked and what hasn’t worked elsewhere.

“What inspired me to run in the first place was that we were in the middle of the great recession,” Holman said. “I have always felt that when you are in a depression, that’s the time to start building public infrastructure so that when inevitably you come out of the recession, you are ready to go, you are leading the pack. Well, it took a lot longer to get out of the recession than anybody had thought, but we’re out now.”

Having said that, he produced from his pocket financial figures for 2014 that in tidy columns show that Auburn is within $20,000 of where it was at the beginning of the great recession, evidence, he says of smart fiscal management unmatched by any other cities.

“We’re leading the pack, so it’s time to get on the front of that wave and capitalize on it,” Holman said. “When you want to measure the performance of a city, you measure it by growth, by how many jobs you create and by how innovative you are,” Holman said.

Growth, Holman said, is about more than just numbers, and as it is inevitable, the thing is to decide what kind of growth it will be: unorganized growth, or smart growth, wise growth, quality growth. What voters are likely to hear him talk about this election season is helping the City smartly manage its inevitable growth from the city of 74,000 people today to the 100,000-plus demographers expect within 10 to 20 years.

“I want to have a community that my children and grandchildren will want to live in and work in. To get that, the growth has to be reasonable and enjoyable, and the city has to be a good place to live in, an interesting place to live in, a bit edgy, a place that makes your soul feel good. If your kids don’t have that, they’ll move away.

“More important, they have to have a good job. If they can’t work here, they’re not going to live here. It’s a lot like prospecting: we can go out and look for the gold mine business, the one in a million … It could happen, you should never dismiss the home run. But there’s also small ball, taking our existing businesses and letting them grow and become more prosperous, so that you take a business that employs six people today and do what you can to make it an employer of 10 people … I want to be a champion of that.”

Below, Holman talks about other issues.

On the City’s relation with schools: “I really believe we need to take advantage of the synergistic opportunities we have so that when we get together we discuss. I mean, who would have thought that Green River Community College would be part of your economic development strategy? Well, it is. So, if we have a carbon-fiber company come to Auburn that needs certified workers, the college can put together a training program in just a few months. We have this wonderful relation with the college and our school system. The number one and number-two grade schools in the state are in Auburn. A Spanish firm that wants to come here has told us that one of our great assets is our Spanish-speaking population,” Holman said.

On transportation and the poor state of local streets and roads: “It’s a pressing need, and the money solves it. But where do we get the money? What you are going to see happening in the next year is that we are forming a transportation committee in Auburn, made up of 15 people from very diverse elements, including students, people from the Muckleshoot Tribe, citizen presence and business presence to talk about the Transportation Benefit District. We have had one for several years, but it hasn’t gone out and done what it could do. The reality is that so much of the money we get in the city can’t be used to repair roads and we have to find other sources.”