Seeing some of our city councilors interact with each other this last year has been a little like watching bitterly divorcing parents trying to feign civility in front of the kids – and of the nine members, three have declined to seek another term, and a fourth is leaving for higher office.
Ultimately, the councilors mostly managed to keep it together this last term, notwithstanding the Ellis matter, and they’ve made some progress on the City’s needs. However, all of this has made for an unusually active electoral season, locally speaking.
We’ve hosted debates for all the contested City Council races, which you can find here on our site, or on our YouTube channel.
At the County, there’s only one contested race for a commissionership, and spoiler alert, it isn’t nearly as interesting as the races for city council.
So, without further ado, our endorsements for local offices this year…
CITY COUNCIL
Ward 1, Jan Napack
Jan Napack has proved to be a deeply thinking and civil councilor with unsurpassable knowledge at both the citywide and ward levels. She puts in the work, and during council sessions she is consistently better prepared than most. During debate, Napack demonstrated deep clarity concerning every level of the city’s housing supply and the issues faced by the houseless – and where the challenges and opportunities lay for what the council can do next for all concerned. She understands how the funding streams work that can overcome the challenges, and we believe she will continue to be an impactful advocate for housing and the houseless if she is reelected.
By contrast, opponent Beckett Hunt focuses primarily on tenants’ rights and ‘stopping the sweeps’ of area homeless camps – along with a far deeper approach to offering long-term social services until folks can stand on their own. Good arguments can be made for all those positions, but it was Napack that spoke to getting both more flexibility and dollars from the state to put legs to programs. As to growing business, both Napack and Hunt support urban renewal and various tax incentives to help grow the local economy – Hunt would set criteria favoring small locally owned and ethically run businesses, Napack would seek to put more outreach, or recruiting in place, and offer more planning code flexibility – these are not mutually exclusive ideas. Both would favor new City facilities, Napack more than Hunt.
On balance, both candidates in this race make good policy arguments, and there’s only a few minor disagreements among them. However, Napack has a track record of adeptly balancing the needs of our community’s neediest citizens, workforce and middle housing, and economic development; which we think she’ll keep doing if she’s reelected. We also like the fact that she has a scientific background and has worked as an environmental researcher – and she viewed a number of the questions we asked from that vantage point.
Ward 2, Briae Lewis
In her first term, Briae Lewis continues to grow into her role as a councilor. Sitting on the City’s Historic Preservation Commission, she spoke to preserving the historic flavor of her downtown ward during our debate and is often the only voice on the matter in City Council meetings. We believe she will ultimately be supportive of upgraded City facilities downtown, but she will also seek to preserve some of the older buildings, as well.
In debate, opponent Dylan de Honor stipulated that he and the incumbent agree on most of the issues at hand, and on several occasions he deferred to her. Lewis has been exposed to the salient issues facing the city these last two years, and we think she is the best option for voters in Ward 2.
Ward 3, Jim Moorefield
If you could build the ‘just right’ city councilor for the moment our community finds itself in, it would look like Jim Moorefield. When it comes to housing, he basically has a black belt, having run the nonprofit affordable housing builder Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services for 20 years. Given our experience watching both WNHS and Moorefield over the years, we’re basically over-the-moon that he’s willing to serve. Moorefield has also been successful advocating for the South Corvallis Urban Renewal District and has had roles at the Community Services Consortium and Community Outreach Inc. He is compellingly well qualified, and topping it off, he had served as a city councilor between 1989 and 1992, so he knows what he’s signing up for, and how to do the job.
Opponent Mark Taratoot is no slouch either – but he is an openly one-issue candidate. Before retiring, Taratoot ran the City’s water conservation program, and worked as a scientist at Oregon State University. What he cares about are the city’s streams and rivers and water resources, period, full stop. That said, he’s smart as hell, and is fundamentally open and fair minded. However, of the two candidates, Jim Moorefield has the breadth of knowledge and track record for getting difficult things done that our fair burg needs now.
Ward 6, Alison Bowden
With three candidates, this will be a ranked choice contest – and our first choice is Alison Bowden. During debate, they consistently delivered compellingly nuanced rationales that were both easy to understand and complex – a talent that’s useful in a council meeting. On policy, Bowden advocates for continuing the city’s decided commitment to compactness over sprawl – and is mercifully aware that our fair burg’s permitting process needs reform – that developers need operational certainties they can count on. But then, their opponents also tend to agree, though Colberg and Masella would add that growing outwards can, at some degree, be helpful.
On fees, taxes and levies, each of the candidates seems to understand the regressivity of the current fees and levies – Colberg is open to a payroll tax, Bowden is cautious about that for lower income folks and forwards the idea of a tax on empty commercial and industrial properties, which this paper has been somewhat supportive of in the past. On the subject of new noise ordinances, all three agree – Bowden believes any new ordinance will need to roll out in higher density areas first which would allow the City to adjust the policy as they go along.
In fact, there is far more agreement among this group than not. Also, we haven’t said much about candidate Richard Masella – who is absolutely an excellent candidate. Whoever wins, Ward 6 will be represented.
But, both Bowden and Colberg have a far deeper knowledge of city operations than one usually anticipates from a first-time candidate – Bowden, somewhat more so, and with the added qualification of an already demonstrated leadership history as a union official for the Corvallis School District’s classified employees. We believe Bowden will be an especially articulate and valuable addition to the council.
Ward 7, Paul Shaffer
Paul Shaffer has proved himself to be an able and responsive councilor, and he is also someone that when asked, will speak his mind. Shaffer has been the only councilor to our knowledge to say in an open council meeting that pursuing the Ellis matter was “wrong.” This was early on, and recently his colleagues voted him in as president of the council, which in some ways, we take as a tacit admission from them that Shaffer had a degree of clarity that they hadn’t. On the other hand, we’ve seen that Shaffer is absolutely willing to intake new information, and change his mind when he believes it’s the right thing to do – something we at The Advocate admire in an elected official.
His opponents are Andrea Bibee and Roy Rheuben, and even though this will be a ranked choice vote, we cannot endorse either as a second choice. If we were absolutely pressed, Rheuben made a better case during our debate than Bibee. Both make good cases for supporting commercial hubs throughout the whole of Corvallis, versus quite as much emphasis on the downtown core. One gets the sense they support investments into downtown, but would like to see more balance. Both envision being able to have businesses closer to where people live. Shaffer is more oriented toward retaining and enhancing downtown as a core for the city.
Rheuben scored points with us on creating infrastructure that’s better for pedestrians and cyclists, though we have some hesitancy about his neglecting cars – there is some evidence that driverless cars may be quite freeing for people that have physical challenges. Rheuben is still a student, but already has experience advocating for environmental policies.
However, we don’t believe Rheuben adequately understands the drivers behind homelessness the way Shaffer has shown himself to in his work as a councilor – or what it will take to attract the business investments he’s hoping folks will make. In short, Shaffer and his opponents have different views in some areas, and similar views in others – but Shaffer is by any estimate an accomplished councilor with a laudable track record, and his opponents may not have been aware of the difference he’s been making on housing and houselessness. We think the City would be well served by Shaffer returning to the Council for another term.
Ward 9, Tony Cadena
When you’re building a house, it’s the finishes that set you to dreaming, but if not thought out, it’s the pipes and wiring you don’t see that can become the stuff of nightmares – Tony Cadena embraces both imperatives. He advertises himself as a pragmatist that cares about excellence in government – and as we’ve watched him in Council meetings, and tracked his thinking through debates, we think he is who says he is. In council meetings, Cadena is one of the quieter members, but when he asks questions or raises a point, he’s salient. We think he’ll seek to update the City’s facilities and will most likely also support an Urban Renewal/TIF District downtown.
Opponent Karen-Jean Canan would like to see the support going toward businesses downtown extended throughout the city. She also forwards the idea of replacing homeless camp sweeps with a three-month rolling moratorium that would, in essence, permit camping for houseless folks along with an anticipable date and next location for when they need to pull up stakes – we think this could be worthwhile if some camp management and wraparound services are put into the mix, but that brings us back to our central point. Cadena is interested in some of the same ideas, and plenty more as well, and he also has that track record of getting the details right so a new program can get legs, and actually work long-term.
COUNTY
County Commissioner Position 3, Nancy Wyse, Democrat
From her time on Corvallis City Council to now, when she’s wrapping up her first term as a County Commissioner, we’ve always liked Nancy Wyse. She’s a sort of good government nerd that we tend to appreciate – and we’ve seen her bring statistics to debates… like, actual notes, and we like that too. However, for this cycle, we chose not to conduct a debate for commissioner – neither of her two opponents have any experience with local government, and that’s a problem in this role.
Green Party candidate James Dashiell says he would like to phaseout the dump – which is straightforward enough. But Dashiell’s other main stated plank has to do with housing, and in our experience a candidate has to have either local industry or government experience to make that boulder roll, otherwise, it’s just words.
Likewise, Republican R. Keith Lembke’s main planks cover poverty, jobs, and business development, which we could like, but one of his chief stated ideas to fix all that is a new nuclear power plant. And even if you think that’s doable, the person to get that done would have to have serious experience in both local government or the energy industry, and Lembke has neither.
We’re not saying Wyse has been perfect, we think she could have been an independent voice of reason to break the county’s justice facility group-think debacle – she wasn’t. However, we’re already seeing signs that a second term may bring a more boldly independent voice from Wyse, and we think she has the experience to make that work for the benefit of the people of Benton County.
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