Pullman will see three primaries this year on Aug. 1, including two for open City Council seats and one for a Pullman School Board director position, before the November general election.

Fritz Hughes, who currently holds the 2nd Ward council seat, is not running for re-election. Four people, including a WSU student and staff member, have filed to compete for his position.

Austin Brown, one of the candidates, is a former ASWSU senator who graduated this month with a degree in political science. With no college-aged council members, Brown said the council is not as inclined to listen to college-level concerns as it should be. He noted the student body has grown over the past few years and is largely enclosed within Pullman’s 2nd Ward.

“My biggest goal is to bring accurate representation to Pullman and specifically to the 2nd Ward,” Brown said.

Brown’s potential agenda items if elected include a greater fiscal responsibility, more environmental clean-up efforts, reduced use of plastic bags and increased funding to add lighting for streets and to fill potholes.

Dan Records, another contender for the seat, has been a Pullman resident for 13 years. For the past five, he has worked for WSU as a senior investigator in the Office of Equal Opportunity. Over the past two years, he has also worked for WSU as an affirmative action coordinator.

Records said his main objective is to keep the council focused on the needs of the community.

“I think it’s important to make sure that all the projects the city is engaging in are part of a long term, sustainable development plan,” Records said. “I really like the city, and it’s given so much to me, I just want to be able to contribute in a positive way.”

Records said he believes his experiences as a business, tax and bankruptcy lawyer prior to working for WSU, and the work he currently does on federal compliance matters for the university, will benefit him as a City Council member.

“The role for City Council is really making sure the interests of the residents are represented on the council and how the council is allocating resources,” Records said.

Garren Shannon, a 22-year Pullman resident who has spent six years on the city’s Planning Commission, four of them as chair, is also running for the 2nd Ward council seat. He served as Lentil Festival Beer Garden chair for about 13 years. It was in this position that he met Hughes, the person whose position he is competing for.

“I like what he’s done,” Shannon said. “When I heard he was stepping down, I thought, ‘I wouldn’t mind giving my time if the city and the community wants me to do that.’ ”

Shannon is also currently on the 2040 committee, whose purpose is to determine what residents within the Pullman community most want to be improved in the coming decades.

“I would like to see some change in how the city engages with the community,” Shannon said.

Troy Smith, the fourth contender for the 2nd Ward council seat, has been a Pullman resident since August of 2014. He currently works as an auditor.

“My main focus is to try to get more tourism, try to work in that area [and] try to help strengthen the Chamber of Commerce,” Smith said.

In Federal Way, where Smith previously lived, he served on the Diversity Commission for three years. He assisted in facilitating community functions, such as book and food drives, as a part of the commission.

In another four-person primary for director of the 4th District of the Pullman School District, incumbent Karl Johanson will face WSU professors Elizabeth Siler and Nathan Roberts, as well as Holland/Terrell Libraries staff member Lipi Turner-Rahman.

In the third primary, for the 1st Ward council seat, incumbent Al Sorensen is running against challengers Hannah Krauss and Eric Fejeran. In the 3rd Ward, incumbent Jeff Hawbaker faces WSU staff member Brandon Chapman.

Chapman is the director of marketing and communications for the College of Education and a former broadcast student of Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson.

He said that six months ago he decided it was the right time to increase his responsibilities in the community, beyond his involvement on the Pullman Board of Adjustment, in Kiwanis and as Pullman Youth Baseball League president.

“[I want] to help make sure that the city I love, my wife loves and my family loves, continues to be that same city,” Chapman said. “I could not just leave it up to somebody else to make decisions.”

Chapman’s platform is for greater collaboration between employees of Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL), college students and the city.

“We have incredible intellectual capital,” Chapman said. “We have so many smart people with good ideas … which can help solve all of the other issues, no matter what the issue is.”

Hawbaker has been on the council for the past seven years, during which he has overseen the realignment of the Moscow-Pullman Regional Airport runway to accommodate more traffic and bigger planes. Hawbaker is also a manager at SEL and has lived in Pullman since 1992.

“There are a lot of things we would want to see changed,” Hawbaker said. “Buildings downtown … City Hall and stuff, need a lot of repairs or maybe a replacement.”

Hawbaker also said he wants to help provide more funds and resources for athletic facilities and for organizations, such as Pullman Parks and Recreation and the Pullman Bureau of Fire Prevention, so they can build upgraded facilities.