A special meeting of the Edmonds City Council was held on January 13, 2026, at 5:30 PM (local time) to interview a single candidate for the builder position on the Architectural Design Board (ADB). The meeting lasted approximately 15 minutes, after which the council adjourned to reconvene at 6:00 PM for the regular meeting.
Interview of Sean Leiser for the ADB Builder Position
The mayor introduced the candidate, Sean Leiser, who has lived in Edmonds for the first 20 years of his life, attended local schools, and has 30 years of experience in construction and development, with 26 years running his own company. He works on a variety of projects including single-family homes, multifamily, townhomes, apartments, and car dealerships. His business and investment properties are located in Edmonds, and he lives in nearby Richmond Beach. The mayor noted that the builder position is the only ADB position exempt from the Edmonds residency requirement, a decision previously made by the council.
Councilmembers asked questions covering several topics:
Leiser expressed willingness to serve and appreciation for the opportunity to volunteer.
I will now call the special meeting of the Edmonds City Council to order. Welcome. Our first item and only item of business tonight is the appointment to the ADB board. And we have a candidate for your consideration. It's been around for a very long time. This is for the builder position specifically. And that is what he does commercial, residential, multifamily, and things like that. And I'll let him actually tell you more about himself and you can ask him questions about things he didn't tell you. Please, if you wouldn't mind coming to the table and uh please share with counsel a a little bit more about yourself. Whoops. Uh once uh can you push the little button there? There you go. Thanks. Okay. Can you hear me? There we go. Uh as the mayor said, my name is Sean Leiser. Um I grew up in Edmonds for the first 20 years of my life. I grew up by C View Park, attended CVU Elementary, Meadowdale Middle School, Meadowdale High School, um, moved all the way to Shoreline, um, have been there pretty much ever since. Um I've been in the construction business and building developing for around 30 years uh on my own with my own company for 26 years. Um do all types of projects from uh single family residence, multifamily uh townhomes, apartments. Uh currently right now we're working on a lot of car dealership work. Um so pretty much have a very broad um swath of types of uh construction types and building types. Um I applied for this position as we only live uh in Risham Beach, which is just a few minutes away from Edmonds, and um spent a lot of our time here. Um my business is actually located in Edmonds as well. Um then also uh own other development properties and investment properties in the city as well. So I'm very much invested in the city and care about Edmonds and love to put forth my uh foot forward to uh you know help in whatever way I can and volunteer for a position as this. Thank you. And before uh I open up to questions, uh I do want to point out that this is not only is this one of the specific positions for the ADB as the builder position, but it is also I believe the only exception uh to the residence, the Edmonds residency, um, which was uh uh a decision made by council some time ago. Um so that if the if that caught your ear, that's the history behind it. Um Councilmember Payne. Thank you, Mayor. Uh thank you for being here, and thank you for putting your application in. Um you clearly are are well qualified for this position, and thank you for um signing up for it and your investment in the community, um, whether it's you know your business being here in Edmonds, also having um your your home in Richmond Beach. I I don't see that as any hurdle. Um what do you find to be the biggest challenge when you are building, say like multifamily residences or um and maybe um some like little subdivisions or developments when you have maybe six um family units in a housing units in a in a row. What is what do you find to be the biggest challenge in um getting that developed and developed on time um when you're here in Edmonds? I would say the probably the biggest hurdle, I mean, overall, is gonna be time. Um because you know, having you know been developing for as long as I have in 30 years, um the timelines for most every city that I've built in between, say Edmonds Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Seattle, you know, I've pretty much built in every city um around here. Um the timelines keep getting longer. And so like review times, just additional layers of reviews and all that kind of stuff. And it even most recently I guess you were asking specific admin. So I was going to give you an example of Limwood. It's probably universal as well. Yeah, I mean, like for instance, in Limwood, you know, Limwood kind of had uh added some additional layers for like additional site plans that we've never done before in the past. And it was something that was just implemented this last year. And uh the example of that was it was more of it was a safety plan that basically uh normally you wouldn't have, say, in a set of construction documents that you submit, you would have like your uh civil engineering, your structural engineering, um, your architectural pages and so forth in your plan set. Um now, for instance, in Limwood, for the type of project we were doing, they now require a safety plan, which basically shows like where you're gonna have your job trailer on the property, where the um routing is gonna be if an ambulance came to the job site, how would that ambulance circulate the property? And so it's like another layer of work which takes more time, which translates more money, um, all those kind of things. So I'd say like, you know, the the biggest thing again is uh two things that kind of run hand in hand, which is time and time is money.