A Seattle native, Tim grew up on Capitol Hill. He attended Stevens Elementary, Hamilton Middle School, Lincoln High, North Seattle Community College, and the University of Washington.
While serving as a Seattle police detective, Tim met Joleen Ellefson, a journalist and fellow Seattleite. Married over 29 years, Tim and Joleen raised three daughters and live on Queen Anne.
Tim’s unique diversity of experience, his community leadership, and lifelong commitment to Seattle have prepared him to serve on the City Council.
Making Headlines Matter
Journalist
Tim graduated from Lincoln High in 1967 and while attending college worked as a journalist for KJR radio, covering news around Seattle at a time of political and racial upheaval. The stories he covered included crime, civil disturbances, and public demonstrations aimed at raising awareness of issues concerning justice and equality. Tim reported from the front lines as the anti-war and civil rights movements presented their cases to the citizens of Seattle.
The late 1960s and early 1970s also witnessed ethical upheaval as a federal grand jury investigated the influence of criminal organizations on Seattle’s police department and government officials. Tim's reporting documented the widespread corruption in the city, focusing especially on how systematic bribery and graft were impacting police officers on the street.
Stepping Into Public Service
Police officer and detective
Tim’s work as a journalist brought him into almost daily contact with police officers, firefighters, and others at the forefront of public service.
This exposure led to a career shift in 1971 when he joined the Seattle Police Department, serving as a patrol officer in West Seattle and Capitol Hill and as a detective in the Criminal Investigations Division.
He also served for three years as a special assistant to the Chief of Police for public affairs responding to media inquiries; briefing media representatives at crime scenes; and preparing speeches, opinion pieces, and special reports for the Chief of Police. Tim wrote extensively on police-press relations and taught police chief-media relations at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
On special assignment to Seattle’s Department of Licensing and Consumer Affairs, he conducted sensitive investigations into city contracting practices. These investigations resulted in significant reforms in the way city contracts were awarded and managed.
Tim’s law enforcement experience has provided him with unique insight into today’s policing challenges and the urgent need for more police officers to protect our neighborhoods. He is a strong advocate for hiring more patrol officers as quickly as possible, something neighborhood crime councils, local business owners, and citizens have advocated for many, many years.
A Heart for the Disadvantaged
Humanitarian worker
In 1978, Tim’s career took another turn when he accepted a writing and communications position with a Seattle-based international humanitarian organization working to overcome extreme poverty in the developing world. This experience did even more to open Tim’s eyes to the negative effects of injustice, racism, and economic systems that exclusively favor the wealthy and privileged.
He traveled to many of the world’s most economically imbalanced countries, where the gap between the rich and everyone else is the widest—Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sudan, Thailand, Uganda, Zaire—and many, many others.
He saw firsthand the devastating consequences of environmental destruction, the unjust economic and government systems and the brutality of cowardly men who lined their pockets while abusing and killing their own people.
He wept with a Seattle pediatrician as they held infants with just hours to live at a refugee medical clinic along the Thai-Cambodian border. In India and Bangladesh he watched as soldiers guarded stockpiles of grain earmarked for international export while a few blocks away children were withering and dying from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. He interviewed Ugandan villagers who had fled from marauding militias obsessed with grabbing territory and power, regardless of the consequences to their country’s people.
He also observed the ravages of public corruption in Pakistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Eastern Europe—corruption that denied citizens their basic human rights and their dignity, that created mistrust and self-doubt, and that seeped into every aspect of life.
These experiences shaped Tim’s core beliefs about poverty, economic injustice, environmental stewardship, and the devastating impact of public corruption.
 Leading to Help Others Serve
Business leadership
In 1985 Tim co-founded a fundraising agency to serve exclusively nonprofit organizations. This company grew to over 150 employees and became Merkle|Domain, a leading agency serving nonprofit organizations in North America and Europe from offices in Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and London.
During Tim’s 28 years in marketing and management, he developed record-breaking campaigns for a wide variety of organizations, including
and many others. He wrote a regular column on fundraising best practices for Fundraising Success magazine and spoke regularly at professional fundraising conferences in the United States and Europe. He was elected vice chair of the Direct Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Federation's Advisory Council, and chaired the Federation’s Ethical Practices Committee.
Kemp Hiatt, Tim, and Dr. George Counts are among founding members of Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth |
Serving Close to Home
Community leadership
Throughout his business career, Tim continued to be passionately committed to public service. During his term as chair of the Queen Anne Community Council, to which he was elected in 1988, he developed a deep-seated appreciation for the unique character and diversity of Seattle’s neighborhoods.
In 1989, Tim was appointed by the Seattle City Council to the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission. Tim served for 12 years—five as chair—on this quasi-judicial, seven-member commission responsible for the enforcement of Seattle’s ethics and elections laws. Under his leadership, the then-separate Board of Ethics and the Elections Commission were merged to form the current Commission; the Code of Ethics was revised and penalties for serious violations increased; education and compliance training efforts were greatly expanded; campaign contribution reports were for the first time made available online; and changes were made to the way complaints were received and how investigations were conducted.
During Tim’s term as chair of the Commission, the election money-laundering case of Tom Stewart was uncovered and successfully prosecuted. This case was adjudicated by the Commission under Tim’s leadership, resulting in the largest civil fine for election law violations imposed in city history. On Tim’s recommendation, evidence developed during the Commission’s investigation was turned over to federal authorities, who successfully prosecuted Stewart on unrelated charges—resulting in Stewart’s payment of what was at the time the largest-ever federal election law penalty of $5 million.
In 2000, Tim was appointed to chair the City Council Citizens’ Panel on WTO Operations, a six-member special commission that reviewed the police response to the WTO demonstrations and issued 11 critical findings of fact regarding police planning, crisis management, police tactics, and civil disorder countermeasures.
In early 2006, Tim was a founding member of the grass-roots Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth, an organization dedicated to promoting appropriate neighborhood development projects. QANRG is focused on preserving the neighborhood’s unique character, diversity, and economic vitality while recognizing the inevitability of development and the fact that property owners have legitimate economic interests in growth. In just weeks, QANRG mobilized nearly 2,000 citizens to sign petitions, attend community meetings, and speak out to city officials about a big-box retail store planned for Queen Anne that poses safety concerns and was out of scale for the neighborhood.
A Progressive Vision, Educated by Experience
 Tim’s diverse experiences have taught him about the power of people to create positive change.
- He saw this as a journalist when individual police officers in Seattle spoke out against corruption and banished a longstanding system of special favors and graft.
- He saw it as a police officer when victims of domestic violence dared to contact the police to ask for protection.
- He saw it as a humanitarian worker when villagers in Africa and South Asia mobilized to stand against corrupt officials or powerful economic interests and demand basic human rights.
These life experiences have helped to shape Tim’s world view. Today, he is dedicated to fighting for economic and social justice for all people, respecting the dignity and value of all individuals, and creating community and government programs that offer opportunity to everyone.
Tim’s business experience has likewise given him a solid understanding of the power of economic growth in creating great cities. He believes that Seattle must maintain a strong pro-business environment, especially for locally owned family businesses and businesses that support working-class families, and that the city needs to attract and keep young families with children in order to sustain our diversity and livability.
Committed to Family
Husband and father
Joleen, Katie, Kim, Tim, and Elisabeth |
Tim has been married for 30 years to Joleen, a web designer and former newspaper editor. They have three daughters. Elisabeth is a journalist in Washington, D.C. Kim is a corporate promotions specialist for the United Way of New York. Katharine is a junior at the University of Portland studying business communications and marketing. Tim, Joleen, and all three of their daughters are proud products of Seattle Public Schools.
“Our family chose to stay in Seattle, to raise our children in this neighborhood, and to support Seattle’s public schools,” Tim says. “We are glad we did.”
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