After 22 years as a county resident and 18 of those spent as a business owner and architect herself, Mary Ellen Winborn sees great opportunity and much potential to be had with a new Clallam County Department of Community Development (DCD) director. Because of her inability to accept the idea of sitting back for another four years, Winborn stepped to the challenge of running.

As the driving forces behind her inspiration to run, Winborn sees both a need for change in leadership within the department and also looks to the state mandated requirement to update the Comprehensive Plan as the perfect opportunity to better the county’s approach to planning and future planning.

“The Comprehensive Plan update, it’s really the one (topic within county) that got me deciding that I had to do this,” Winborn said. “I’m really excited about that and what it can generate.”

Winborn was born and raised in Mississippi, but moved to New Orleans following high school where she lived for seven years, working for a consulting engineering firm and later for a landscape architect. This early exposure within the field of engineering and architecture made her realize she wanted to pursue a degree in architecture. Winborn attended Mississippi State University in 1986 to study architecture and has been practicing within the field ever since.

“As a architect you’re not only constantly designing and rethinking how to approach a project or challenge, but one must be familiar and work closely with agencies on zoning, building codes and ecology,” Winborn said.

“I’ve had a lot of planning experience,” Winborn said. “As an architect you’re organizing peoples’ lives, setting a backdrop for them to live the life they want and you’re foreseeing problems and constantly preventing problems from happening.”

Because the Department of Community Development isn’t just a place to get a building permit — it is roughly 70 percent planning-oriented — Winborn feels someone with more of a planning mindset, such as herself, would better fit the position of director. Despite her opponent, Sheila Roark Miller’s extensive background as a building inspector, Winborn said a building inspector is a “reactionary” type of position and the DCD director position requires the use of more foresight with an emphasis on future problem solving.

“A reactionary approach can serve a purpose, but I don’t think it serves well in this position,” Winborn said. “And that’s why I am running.”

With the right person directing the DCD, Winborn said that department has the potential to set a strong foundation for economic growth and the creation of jobs. Although the department may not directly create jobs, it can impact the development of the land and land usages to create stepping stones for industry, Winborn said. Such planning also can be done in conjunction with the natural landscape, she added.

“When we update the Comprehensive Plan, it will be a great opportunity to take inventory because we need to know what’s out there first before we help people figure what the possibilities are for their business,” Winborn said. “We to need make it (Comprehensive Plan) a tool that can work for us, not just a mandate.”

With Initiative 502 as one major challenge facing Winborn as the potential DCD director, another challenge Winborn anticipates is simply “making up for lost ground” and knowing that “the staff has a morale problem,” Winborn said.

“I’ll have to earn their (staff) trust and the community’s trust,” Winborn said. “I’ve got a lot of ground to make up and I recognize it is not going to be easy.”

Fortunately for Winborn, again as an experienced architect, she has learned to become an expert in whatever project she’s involved in and quickly. Relying on her skills gained in her profession throughout the years, Winborn said she is confident in her ability to enter into the position as DCD director and quickly get up to speed on her responsibilities and begin to gain both her staff and the community’s trust.

“This is an opportunity to see the county for what it can really be,” Winborn said. “I see a lot of potential here.”