By DON CARTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Growth has brought changes, but city officials are trying to maintain a small-town connection with residents.

In a quarterly newsletter, Mayor Dave Weiser and the council members are listed, along with their home phone numbers. But only a few, about two a month, call the mayor at home.

So the mayor takes a more direct approach.

One recent Tuesday, Mayor Dave Weiser sat down to lunch with six residents, chosen at random from voter registrations. The mayor says no subjects are taboo at the monthly sessions except personnel and legal and land acquisition matters, which are confidential by state law.

First, the citizens want to know about the golf course. The mayor assures them that money for the $4 million renovation "comes strictly from the golfers," not the taxpayers, and will be repaid by greens fees.

The garbage billing system, police and fire dispatching, plans for a skateboard park and other subjects are discussed, then talk turns to the inevitable: growth and traffic.

"The problem is, we just don't have the roads for it," observes one woman.

Weiser is sympathetic. He says the city is doing the best it can with the money available and that, yes, he lives near one of the problem intersections. His wife's car was recently smacked as she tried to back out of the driveway onto one of the city's busy arterials.

Off on another topic, the citizens seem surprised to learn their city has a 23-bed jail, and that while many occupants are "visitors," some are Marysville residents.

The city's former jail now probably qualifies as one of the nation's prettiest. Its bars are painted fuchsia and it is used as a computer area in the Ken Baxter Senior Community Center. The recently opened center offers computers, exercise equipment, a pool table and other amenities, most of them donated by Marysville businesses and service clubs.

One of the center's rooms is whimsically named the "Comeford Zone," a reference to Marysville founder James Comeford.