By Dow Constantine

Special to the Auburn Reporter

The holidays are a good opportunity for us to reflect on the year past, myself included. This holiday season is particularly special for me and Shirley because it’s the first with our baby girl, Sabrina. I am so grateful that she will grow up right here in the neighborhood that raised me.

This year has also been a rewarding one for me professionally. As King County Executive, I had the opportunity to deliver results to our communities across the region, particularly for the people of Auburn. I want to take this moment to report to our neighbors on the work my administration did in 2014 to ensure that King County remains a healthy, prosperous place to live.

The most urgent local need we addressed this year was keeping open the Auburn Public Health Center, which had been scheduled to close next month due to years of declining federal and state funds. The clinic and its satellite offices in Enumclaw and on the Muckleshoot Reservation provide important health services to about 10,000 women and children – nearly all of whom live below the poverty line.

I was pleased to announce in November that we had developed an unprecedented funding partnership that includes cities, tribal leaders, businesses, nonprofits, schools, fire districts, and our own Public Health employees to keep the clinic open for the next two years. Along with action taken by the County Council, we have the funds needed to maintain important health services in Auburn while we develop a long-term funding source for Public Health.

We demonstrated once again what we are capable of achieving when we work together. My goal for 2015 is to apply that same level of shared purpose and urgency to create a region-wide framework that supports prevention and intervention efforts on a larger scale.

I call it Best Starts for Kids, an initiative to ensure that every baby born and every child raised in King County reaches adulthood, ready to succeed.

We have to spend so much money on lives gone awry – on bad outcomes like crime, mental illness and addiction – that there is very little left for evidence-based programs that are more effective at helping our children and young adults reach their full potential. Best Starts for Kids will take advantage of groundbreaking UW research on early childhood brain development, help school-age kids facing physical or mental challenges and create communities that support moms and families.

This was also an historic year for our efforts to create a more integrated and efficient transportation system that includes buses, rail, roads, and water taxis – all working together to improve mobility in our growing region.

Riders in the Auburn area will benefit from increased joint planning and service coordination by Metro and Sound Transit, which I called for this year in my role as the Chair of the Sound Transit Board of Directors.

To ensure that our transportation system remains accessible, the County Council, Sound Transit Board, and I created a reduced-fare program for lower-income riders. No other major transit agency in the United States has a reduced fare program of this scope. It’s an example of how we are turning King County’s commitment to building social equity into action.

Thanks to our effort over the past five years to increase efficiency across all King County departments, Metro was able to deliver record-high service in 2014 – more than 120 million trips, or an average of 400,000 trips each weekday.

We continue to receive national and state recognition for our commitment to creating the best-run government in the United States. This summer, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government announced that it had selected our Healthy Incentives program for its prestigious Innovations in American Government Award. I was recently invited to Harvard to discuss how King County is applying Lean principles to empower our front-line employees to continuously improve how we deliver services. Earlier this year, the State Auditor’s Office announced that we had earned a “clean audit” of our finances.

None of our accomplishments this year would have been possible without the partnerships we’ve built with community stakeholders, other elected leaders, and the hard-working public employees who continue to deliver the services that make our region a better place to live.

I wish you the happiest of holidays, and look forward to continuing our partnerships to advance equity and social justice, confront climate change, increase regional mobility and opportunity, and provide the best start for every child.

Dow Constantine is the King County executive. Reach him at 206-263-9600 or Dow.Constantine@kingcounty.gov.