Mary Lou Pauly will be seated on the Issaquah City Council for her first meeting on Monday, Dec. 2, replacing Joe Forkner who was appointed to the seat when Mark Mullet was elected to the state Senate in Nov. 2012.

Forkner, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor this November, could still be back on the council if he chooses to apply for and be selected to the seat which will now be vacated by Fred Butler, the Mayor-elect.

Pauly ran unopposed for Position No. 1 on the council, and is about to begin her first experience as an elected official. Soft spoken and direct, Pauly and her husband, Karl, moved to Issaquah in 1993. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, the couple and their grown children — Karl James, 27 and Kaela, 24 — became U.S. citizens 7 years ago. A recession in Canada led them here, where Karl could work for the same company. Both Mary Lou and Karl are civil engineers.

“My husband discovered Issaquah,” she said. “We loved the setting and the green hills.”

Pauly is a part-time consultant for Conestoga-Rovers and Associates, leaving her time to take on the big issues and committee appointments.

“I want to be part of the challenge,” she said. “There’s a lot of big issues boiling up here. I really like it here and don’t plan to leave.”

Pauly is already familiar with many aspects of Issaquah having served on the Issaquah Development Commission, and the Klahanie PAA study task force. She is on the steering committee for the capital campaign of the non-profit Imagine Housing, which works with organizations to purchase and develop property on the east side for affordable housing.

In 2011 Pauly served on the Central Issaquah Plan environmental impact study reader team and hopes to use those skills to focus on land use issues, particularly involving the Central Issaquah Plan.

“I want to be sure the area receives a lot of attention and interest as the development comes in so it meets the vision of the new residents, but fits in with the existing city,” she said.

Pauly fully supports incentives built into the plan which encourage builders to include affordable housing in their projects.

She loves historic downtown Issaquah and thinks it’s a good model for success. She wants to make sure the old-town character of Issaquah is preserved in the central plan.

As of yet, she has not received any committee positions, but she said “one of the big workload ones would be fine with me.”

Pauly has yet to get to know much of the city staff, but has always found the staff to be very professional. She’s known Mayor-elect Butler since the mid- to late-1990s, working with him on the development commission and said she will work well with him, although she would have worked well with Forkner, too.

“You couldn’t go wrong with either one,” she said.

As far as her new colleagues on the council, she has met most of them and feels confident she’ll fit in.

“Watching them in council meetings got me more interested in serving,” she said.