By DON GRAYDON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Mayor Bill Acker is in the waning days of his decade-long tenure. At age 66 he is newly remarried, to Ann Hinken, a 44-year-old nurse and Index resident. He'll devote time to his new bride and to his thriving sonar equipment business in Seattle, BioSonics.

Acker is an Index native, raised at a time when the Skykomish River served as the municipal dump. The north fork of the Sky is now a proposed national wild and scenic river -- untouchable.

Acker and the Town Council ponder such matters as drainage problems and dog-leash laws. They oversee the town's water supply, a coveted fresh-water spring. They contract with the county for sheriff's patrols.

The school and firehouse are part of taxing districts that extend beyond the town's borders. Septic tanks at each home and business take care of sewage. Potholes in the streets mainly tend themselves.

Index has changed little during Acker's years as mayor, and he's happy to see it evolve slowly.

"We don't want the place to be Leavenworth," he says, dismissing the Bavarian-theme tourist town on the other side of Stevens Pass.

Index, he says, "is filled with activists who want the status quo."

All the spots are filled for the Sept. 16 primary election, mainly with one candidate per position. But three people are running to succeed Acker.

Kent McLaughlin (no relation to maintenance man Dan) is a longtime town councilman who wants to be mayor. His years of zealous drum-beating on community affairs have made him known to all -- a double-edged distinction he acknowledged earlier this year with an offer in his monthly Kentley's Korner newspaper column to sit down with anyone who wants to tell him face-to-face what they think of him.

McLaughlin guaranteed "complete and total amnesty to all that participate."

In a campaign write-up, he promises to "generate community enthusiasm and spirit" and points out that "I have been highly trained to create a reality rather than to live into the already existing reality."

Landscaper Sandy Gordon, in her mayoral campaign statement, yearns for a quieter era. "Index always has been a step out of time," she says. "I like it that way."

River guide Pete Gott keeps his pitch to a single sentence in which "Pete says hello to the townsfolks and invites anyone to talk to him any time about his goals for the town. . . . "

Continued:

• Small town 'on brink of change'
• Tiny village boasts lots of diversity
• Mother Nature is the real power here
• Progress may bring end to isolated splendor