Jason Antonelli is running for the position 6 seat on the Redmond City Council with an eye toward fixing the city’s transportation issues.

Antonelli has worked for Microsoft for more than 20 years and said he’s been getting more involved in local government, especially following position 2 candidate Steve Field’s 2015 mayoral bid.

He started going to city council meetings and attending Education Hill Neighborhood Association meetings and applying for a planning commission position.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of diversity of opinion or debate on the council,” he said.

An example of this is a large number of unanimous votes, even on issues like marijuana business zoning where there were protests outside city hall during the vote.

Bringing other viewpoints to the council to tackle issues like congestion are important to him.

Antonelli is skeptical that some projects the city is undertaking, like converting streets to two-way routes downtown, will help reduce congestion.

He said he would also try and implement a common set of measurements to gauge whether projects will be or are effective in achieving their goals.

“I think the key thing that we have to do is establish a common set of metrics on what we should be improving,” he said.

Figuring out commuting patterns would be one way of doing this, and how long different modes of transportation take riders to get to their destinations.

Undertaking more capital investments within the city is also a priority for Antonelli.

He also hopes to reassess business licensing and impact fees that businesses and corporations pay to the city to make sure they offset the impacts of being located in the city.

He’s also excited to see that all three council races on the ballot are competitive this year in contrast to earlier elections.

“I do think there’s a certain lack of accountability to the voters by just having all these races uncontested,” he said of past years.