Voting is your right and responsibility; you owe it to yourself and your community to do your research. In a town like Snohomish it is easy to meet your candidates. They live among you. Most frequently they own or work for public facing businesses and volunteer for local civic and charitable organizations.
Here are the resources I used:
Candidate campaign pages are where candidates will dig deep to provide all the information they think will paint them in a favorable light. Look at and evaluate statements and endorsements.
Community Facebook pages and forums. This is where you will find the community fact checking the candidates. After all these people are our neighbors.
Look at their business resume: does it support and contribute to a rationale supporting their candidacy.
Ask AI, like Chat GPT or Perplexity. AI will scour published sources for a response.
You will find I have spent a great amount of space on each candidates volunteer record. The reasons? Volunteering in your community is how you become known and trusted. Volunteers build networks of supporters who are willing to work for the candidate. Folks willing to work for nothing but the end result of making their community better have ticked the first box of public service. If they work effectively, and are able and willing to assume leadership roles, they have ticked the second.
Finally, and this is for candidate Hoffman, volunteering is essentially Networking 101, a vital skill to advancing professionally.
Council Candidate links, by position, are below, with a brief summary of my findings.