Former Burien City Councilmember Sue Blazak, along with Highline College Vice President of Administration Larry Yok, were appointed Monday (Feb. 22nd) along with 26 others to a new Regional Transit Task Force that will advise on the future of King County Metro Transit services.

King County Executive Dow Constantine announced the 28 regional and community leaders in a press release on the King County website:

“I’ve asked this cross-section of regional leaders and transit users to engage in a discussion about how we can best deliver transit service for all parts of the county within the resources we have,” said Executive Constantine. “I deliberately sought a group of people who are willing to put aside political divisions and think creatively about how to plan a transit system that will serve us well in the future.”

Constantine said the conversation will include development of a comprehensive vision for what the regional transit system should look like in the future as well as criteria for systematically growing or reducing the transit system, depending on the revenues available.

Sue Blazak

The geographically balanced 28-member task force includes a mix of elected officials and representatives of business, labor, education, and human service agencies, along with riders.

“Our goal was to pull together a task force that was diverse and represented the broad perspectives across our county—from students to elderly people, from business to labor, from Seattle to Maple Valley, and more,” said Metropolitan King County Councilmember Larry Phillips, sponsor of the motion creating the panel. “The Regional Transit Task Force is charged with developing a regional vision to shape our transit system for the future and address the revenue shortfalls Metro faces. I think these individuals, with input from the larger community, are up to that task.”

The task force is being asked to develop policy options for discussion by July and to adopt final policy recommendations by September 2010.

Here’s the full list of 28 appointees:

REGIONAL TRANSIT TASK FORCE
CATEGORY	NAME	REPRESENTING
Accessible services	Jane Kuechle	AtWork
Economic development	Kate Joncas	West – Downtown Seattle Assoc
Economic development	Christine Hoffman	East – Redmond Chamber
Economic development	Tom Pierson	South – Federal Way Chamber
Education	Larry Yok	South – Highline Comm. College
Education	Josh Kavanagh	West – Univ. of Washington
Elected official	Suzette Cooke	South – Kent
Elected official	Noel Gerken	South – Maple Valley
Elected official	Tom Rasmussen	West – Seattle
Elected official	Chris Eggen	West – Shoreline
Elected official	Grant Degginger	East – Bellevue
Elected official	Fred Butler	East – Issaquah
Environmental	Rob Johnson	Transportation Choices Coalition
Environmental	Chuck Ayers	Cascade Bicycle Club
Good government	James Kelly	Urban League of Metro. Seattle
Organized labor	Carl Jackson	Amalgamated Transit Union
Organized labor	David Freiboth	King County Labor Council
Puget Sound Regional Council	Bob Drewel	PSRC
Riders	Sue Blazak	South
Riders	Carla Saulter	West
Riders	Shiv Batra	East
Social services	Estela Ortega	West – El Centro de la Raza
Social services	Lynn Moody	East – Hopelink
Trip reduction	Liz Warman	South – The Boeing Company
Trip reduction	Jim Stanton	East – Microsoft
Transportation expert	Steve Marshall	Cascadia Center
Transportation expert	Jared Smith	Parsons Brinckerhoff
Transit Advisory Committee	Ed Miller	Transit Advisory Committee