Lebanon Local asked each City Council candidate running on the November ballot the same questions and received response via email or phone call.
Years in Lebanon: Moved to Lebanon in 2007
Education: Associate’s degree in law enforcement from Pierce College in Washington
Professional Background/Work Experience: U.S. Army for 21 years; Deputy Sheriff; Business Owner. Now runs an affording housing non-profit.
Political Experience/Affiliations: Registered Republican. Eight years on the Lebanon Budget Committee. Past three and a half years on City Council.
Other Community Involvement: Lebanon Budget Committee – 8 years; Lebanon Soup Kitchen; Warming/Cooling Center; Social Services Outreach; Affordable Housing
Family: Married more than 45 years with two children
Why do you want to serve on City Council?
I think I bring a lifetime of experience and leadership to the position. I have the ability to bring sides together. I don’t come with any set ideology or preconceived notions. I like to listen to everybody involved and determine what the best course of action is, and that includes being very transparent with the voters, listening to what they have to say, and taking that into account, and then using my best judgment.
Please describe your view of the proper role of government and how your philosophy of government would impact how you carry out your responsibilities in leading the city.
My philosophy in government is listening to the people. I heard it said one time by the Georgia delegate to the First Continental Congress, he said he’s not sure if his job is to give his best judgment or listen to the voters, even when he thinks they’re wrong. My thing is, listen to the voters and see what they think, and then do what I believe is in the best interest of the voters and the public.
Our job in government, primarily, the first thing is always to keep the citizens safe, just like the US Constitution.
You’ve got to be absolutely transparent with what we’re doing. You can’t do things behind closed doors. You’ve got to make sure that you listen to the people and that the people know what’s going on.
What are the three most important issues/challenges you believe Lebanon should address in the next four years? How would you address these?
Well, the big things that we need to look at are the law enforcement, to make sure we’re fully manned, fully staffed; being able to get the jail back open; and the budget, we have a structural deficit that we need to work with.
With the budget with law enforcement, we’re really on the path for that by making them more competitive financially with the other departments in our area. We’ve stopped the outflow of officers by and large, and we’re getting to the point where we actually have more than two officers on duty at a time, which is wonderful.
Getting the jail open falls in line with the budget. We need to get the budget fixed. Everybody keeps asking me ‘How can we have a deficit?’ and it’s pretty simple. You can throw a lot of words and convoluted stuff, but essentially Measures 5 and 50 restrict the amount of tax dollars we can get, the property taxes, the main driver for funding for the city. The City of Lebanon only gets 29 cents on the dollar of taxes that are collected. So we’re very constrained. Yet at the same time in the last three and a half years, we’ve experienced almost 21% inflation. So, just like everybody else’s budgets, ours takes a hit because we can’t increase our income dramatically. It’s not like we can go work more hours, yet we get hit with inflation just like everybody else does. So we have to explore different ways of being able to fund the government, and that’s what we’re in the process of doing.
What goals do you hope to achieve while serving on the council?
Solve the budget issue; continue to support and increase the law enforcement presence in town, because that’s quality of life stuff, the old broken windows theory of policing; the other thing is, manage growth in town.
The town is growing, whether we like it or not. The idea of growth and whether we wanted to increase the size of the town, that horse left the barn when we invited Lowe’s in. That started it. We went from basically a timber industry town through some real hard times after the spotted owl and all that stuff came out, and the timber industry really took a nosedive, and we had to reinvent ourselves, and we’re starting to do that.
So now it’s how do we manage that growth so that we have the people coming in, we have the growth that we need, but we don’t lose that small town feel at the same time? And it’s a fine balancing act that you have to do. And you want to bring in new businesses. It’s great that we get these franchise businesses, but I want to encourage the small town business, the mom and pop places at the same time.
The city is facing some financial challenges right now as the budget foresees a multimillion dollar deficit in the coming years. What do you believe would be the best course for fixing this problem?
Well, that’s what we’re trying to figure out, which would be the best course of action, and we don’t have an answer yet. That’s why we’re going to be having the open houses with folks on the 10th and the 15th to have those discussions. We haven’t settled on anything.
The city already has eliminated 9.75 FTE (full time employees) from our payroll to help. All of our division leaders said no to a COLA increase this year to help with the budget, and then I pushed through during the budget hearings to stop paying the city council and mayor while we’re in this predicament, which did not make me a lot of friends. I mean, it’s not a lot of money, but to my mind it’s leadership by example. If we’re asking our division leaders to do with less and they did it voluntarily, and we’re deleting FTE, then why should I get paid $225 a month per councilor and the mayor $1,000 a month? The budget committee made that decision and voted on it to remove that for at least a year.
A lot of city government revolves around funding – budgets and taxation. In general, how do you view the city’s performance in these areas? If you would change it, how would you do so?
I’ve answered part of that already with the budget questions. I think we’ve done a good job.
One of the pluses was when we got the ARPA money in. Unlike some places, we didn’t use it to build systems that were not self-sustaining, like some of the school district and cities around us. We used it for one-time costs like beefing up our Internet security and that sort of thing. We also used it to bonus our employees that didn’t have the option during COVID to work from home. I mean, our police and our public works folks can’t really do sewer laterals from home. So we’ve done well there.
I don’t know yet what the answer is for ‘How do we fix the problems?’ That’s why we’re having these open houses. We want to hear what people think. It’s easy to say ‘This is messed up,’ but then there’s the next question. Alright, we’re messed up; what do we do about it? If you don’t agree with it, that’s great, I want to hear it, but what’s your solution? And that’s what we’re looking for from the public. Give them our ideas, get their ideas and see where we can meet. How it’s solved is by not only getting 29 cents on our tax dollar, but that’s not going to happen. People think we get all these dollars, but all these different organizations that have the ability to do taxes and then compression, it makes it tough.
The city, like many others, faces challenges related to homelessness. What policies do you propose to address this issue, keeping in mind both compassion for those in need and the interests of residents and businesses?
And taking into account the state laws. We have the ‘time, place, manner’ restrictions for where people can sleep. We also have exclusion zones so they can’t sleep downtown, that sort of thing that are very well enforced by Dala (Johnson, community policing officer) and Dave (Albanese, community service officer) and the rest of the force. The city has worked with nonprofit groups to help find places for people, to get them off the streets and into programs and housing and that sort of thing. I think continuing that would be the way to go.
We’ve done a very good job of lowering the number of homeless that we have in town.
Why should voters consider electing you? How would you make a difference on the City Council?
I don’t come with any certain ideology. I don’t think that we need to go ultra-liberal. I don’t think we need to go back to Mayberry R.F.D. We’ve got to find that middle ground. The real success of America is our ability to compromise and understand that we can’t go backwards. We have to go forward, but we can do it in a safe and sanct manner. I bring the ability to see multiple sides of an issue and weigh out what I believe is the best course of action for the city and the best direction, and I have the ability to help other people see that, like the psilocybin as an example.
Folks were of two minds, and I was too. I have friends of mine that have PTSD back east that were part of some of the test programs for psilocybin for mental health stuff. Some of them did really well, some of them it had no effect whatsoever. So I’m of two minds. My problem with it, and a lot of the folks didn’t know, was the State of Oregon’s requirements for folks to administer psilocybin and run these programs, it’s basically high school diploma and 40 hours of online training, and you can administer these drugs and monitor. That doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence. When it first came when it first came up, OHA still had not fleshed out all the requirements. That’s why we put the initial two year moratorium on it. And then when they did flesh it out, it was high school diploma, 40 hours of online and you’re certified to go, and it did not fill me with confidence. So I did not feel comfortable with that. I was able to express that to the other councilors and get their buy-in that this is probably not an appropriate use of the city, time, effort and support.
I bring reasonable, common sense type of solutions. I like to look at what other people have done and see where it’s worked or hasn’t, and see what can we do differently? How can we take something – I believe in plagiarism, on some of these ideas – I’ll take your idea and see how it could work in Lebanon and make changes to it to accommodate our situation, because every town is different.