By Rebecca Wallis
MCMINNVILLE, OR – October 4, 2024 Updated 1:00pm
Below are the 15 complex questions asked of Councilor Chenoweth on a variety of multi-layered subjects. Councilor Chenoweth chose to answer 15 of the 15 questions. Our editorial team did not throw softballs. We threw hardballs. Our complex questions are relevant, provocative, and essential to understanding the person who is running for city council. All answers provided by this candidate have been printed in their entirety, without editing, exactly as provided.
1. Economic Development and Diversification: McMinnville is growing, and with that comes economic opportunities and challenges. How do you plan to support local businesses, promote economic diversification, and ensure sustainable economic growth, especially in the face of potential downturns in key industries like agriculture and wine tourism?
Since being elected in 2020 I have been working on trying to unlock the land between the hospital and the airport. It’s been zoned industrial for many years but because of the cost to put in the infrastructure it has not been able to be developed. We recently completed the 3-mile lane area plan. One of the most contentious portions of that plan was a proposed rezone from industrial to much needed commercial. I fought hard to get that accomplished and succeeded. Commercial land has the potential to carry the infrastructure development costs. This is one of my biggest wins on council. It will help to unlock that industrial land which will bring much needed high paying jobs into our community. The industrial side will be mixed used which means we will be allowing for light industrial, corporate office space, and research and development in a collaborative campus environment. All of that will bring the needed economic diversification and ensure sustainable economic growth.
In terms of supporting local businesses, I have been the strongest voice on council in opposition to increased fees and taxes on our business partners and will continue to do so.
2. Affordable Housing: Housing affordability is a concern for many in McMinnville. What specific policies would you support to increase affordable housing options in the city?
The lack of affordable housing in our communities is one of the largest problems facing Oregon communities today.Any solution provided for by a city government is a Band-Aid on a problem that has been building ever since SB 100 was passed in 1973. The only real solution to this problem is in the hands of the legislature in Salem. They must fix the land use planning laws. SB-100 brought to Oregon the concept of the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB). The idea was to provide cities with an artificial boundary around them limiting their growth. That artificial boundary is supposed to represent 20 years’ worth of needed land supply based on anticipated population growth. The intent was to minimize urban sprawl which on the surface sounds like a great idea. The problem is economic principles were not considered. When you limit supply of any product the guaranteed result is an increase in price for that product. By artificially limiting the land supply they caused the price of land to increase. The average lot in McMinnville is selling for around $225,000 for just the dirt. After city permits and fees the lot runs closer to $250,000 before a builder even begins to level the land to start to build the home. SB-100 was just the beginning of land use planning laws. The net result of our current land use planning laws was that it took McMinnville until 2020 to expand it’s UGB. Environmental groups using the system created by the legislature can severely delay the process or block it altogether. The only real solution to the problem is for the legislature to fix the land use planning disaster they created. Any other solution is just a feel good measure that may provide some cheaper housing for 5 or 10 years but will not actually fix the problem.
3. Public Safety: How do you plan to address the community’s concerns regarding public safety, and what initiatives would you propose to enhance cooperation between law enforcement and residents?
We have multiple public safety issues facing McMinnville residents. From criminal behavior occurring on the streets, to high-speed racing occurring through our residential neighborhoods, to petty crime running almost unchecked, they all have one common thread; we do not have enough police officers. The single most important thing we can do to increase safety in our community is take whatever steps are necessary to fill the vacancies in the McMinnville PD. I’ve been told it’s not a problem of funds by our chief in multiple City Council meetings where I’ve asked. I’ve been told statewide and nationwide recruitment is proving to be very difficult. All our neighbors’ police departments are fully staffed. It’s time to get to the bottom of why we’re struggling to recruit in McMinnville. I started questioning this with our city manager and our chief beginning around the 1st of this year when we reached 7 vacancies. I would favor bringing this to the top of the list of priorities that our city manager should be addressing. We need a fully staffed police force and with that most of these other issues will get addressed which will make once again our community members feel safe.
4. Environmental Sustainability: With the growing emphasis on environmental responsibility, what steps should McMinnville take to become a more sustainable and resilient community?
I think every community should be taking steps to ensure what they are doing is mindful of the impact it’s having on the environment. I am concerned that often we fall prey to what sounds like would be good for the environment but proves not to be. I believe we should include in our process of decision making determining which option before us is both the most financially responsible and environmentally sustainable approach. Our planning of our cities needs to be cognizant of how far our residents need to travel to meet their basic needs. For example, currently those living out by the airport must travel all the way to Safeway, Albertson’s or Harvest Fresh to buy food, they must travel to either end of our city to get gas. I believe the term for that area is a food desert and it’s also a gas desert. While I’m not a fan of five-minute cities, I am a fan of thoughtfully developing a community to shorten those trips and thus make us a more sustainable and resilient community.
5. Transportation and Infrastructure: McMinnville has a mix of urban and rural infrastructure needs. How would you prioritize road maintenance, public transportation, and infrastructure improvements?
One of the things I love about McMinnville is how well the city has developed through its life so far. While you will hear some of my fellow civic leaders decry past leaders for their failure to address infrastructure, I am impressed. A drive through rural Oregon will leave you with the understanding that McMinnville is one of the few cities of our size that has such well-developed sidewalks and streets. We have a government that was wise enough to recognize the value of a public utility and formed McMinnville Water and Light as a public utility with its own governing Commission. That Commission was wise enough to get water rights every opportunity they had and to sign long term contracts with the Bonneville powers administration. These decisions put us in a position that makes us the envy of most of Oregon if not the United states. Our power is cheap, our water is crisp, clean, and abundant. We are in a fantastic position on these infrastructure needs that most cities are dependent upon some outside source for. We had the foresight to completely renovate our wastewater reclamation facility a couple of decades ago. We long ago separated wastewater into its own department with its own line item on the Water and Light bill and the charge for this service includes projected needed upgrades in the future. For communities now faced with the need to upgrade aging their reclamation infrastructure they understand how important and expensive this can be. The civic leaders that went before me anticipated this and put in processes that would prevent potential problems going forward. In terms of road maintenance public and infrastructure improvements I believe currently our processes are showing proper prioritization. As the PERS crisis begins to lessen I would increase funding to our public works department. In terms of public transportation McMinnville is still a city that is wanting to be a big city but really isn’t big enough to support public transportation infrastructure beyond what we have already done. This resides in the hands of the county where more funds are available for public transportation.
6. Economic Inequality: Income disparity is a growing issue in many communities. What role should the city play in addressing economic inequality, and what programs would you advocate for to support lower-income residents?
The city really doesn’t have a role to play in income inequality. We have virtually $0.00 for social services. From a philosophical point of view the great equalizer is an effective education system that is focused on training our children to be able to be productive members of society, how to think critically, and how to succeed in society. There will always be those that are wealthy, those that are poor, and those that fall at all levels in between. Our role as elected office holders is to ensure that all have the same opportunity to succeed. What everyone does with the opportunities presented to them is up to them. It is also our role as elected office holders to help ensure we have safety nets for those legitimately in need. Again, from a city perspective, we don’t have any of those tools available to offer.
7. Parks and Recreation: How important is the expansion and maintenance of parks and recreational facilities to you? What new amenities or improvements would you prioritize for McMinnville’s parks?
The expansion and maintenance of parks and recreational facilities as the city grows is very important to me. We need to continue to increase our available space in parks and recreational facilities to meet the needs of our population growth. What worked for 15,000 people is not going to work for 35,000 or 50,000 people. The biggest improvement would be more bathrooms at all our parks, and I will continue to advocate for them. I will also continue to advocate for more privately owned facilities for our young people. When I moved here in 1982 there were two bowling alleys, a roller rink, an under 18 dance facility, and an arcade. With the announcement of the impending closure of the remaining bowling alley none of these will be left. We need investment into the community for things for our young people to do. I will continue to advocate for that.
8. Diversity and Inclusion: How do you plan to ensure that all voices in McMinnville are heard and represented, particularly those of marginalized and underrepresented communities?
In my voters’ pamphlet statement, I included listening as one of the things I will do as a City Councilor. Listening is the number one way to ensure everyone marginalized underrepresented or not feels hurt. As a City Councilor I will commit to continuing the practice that I have of ensuring people are heard. The best way to ensure people are heard is to take their concerns seriously when they come before us. I have a reputation of meeting with those that come before us to address their concerns and will continue to do so. We recently had a consultant perform a study regarding how we are doing at welcoming members of our community. I am pleased to report that 100% of those surveyed who were not city employees said they felt welcomed when they dealt with our staff. 90% of our staff feel welcomed in their roles within the city. I’m excited about that. McMinnville is a great community filled with great people our employees are second to none. We are doing a tremendous job of making sure all who come to us feel welcomed and heard.
9. Homelessness: Homelessness continues to be a critical issue in many Oregon cities, including McMinnville. What approaches do you believe will be most effective in addressing homelessness in our community?
Homelessness is continuing to be a problem vexing our communities. I have long stated that the only solution to homelessness is to have both a carrot and a stick. The absence of one or the other will create different problems. On the West Coast we have had an absence of a stick due to a combination of bad decisions at the 9th Circuit Court and state legislation emulating those decisions. Fortunately, in the last few months, we have seen the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit’s decision regarding homelessness and cities abilities to address it. I hope the legislature will recognize that their legislation now is in direct contradiction to what the Supreme Court has said. As I mentioned before cities of our size do not have a social services budget. That leaves the role of the City to be the stick while the county and NGOs fulfill the role of the carrot. The City’s role therefore is law enforcement and when somebody breaks the law, we need to hold them to account.
This question seems to be asking what I think is the solution to homelessness in a wider view than just within the City of McMinnville. I think it’s very important to address the homeless problem based upon the actual need of the individual who is experiencing homelessness. Predominantly we can break them into four categories; those who are down on their luck, those who are drug addicted and want no responsibility, those who are mentally ill, and those who I call vagabonds.
Those “down on their luck” – Predominantly this portion of the homeless fall in what we call the invisible homeless. These folks are couch surfing, temporarily living out of their cars or maybe they’ve gone back home to live with mom and dad. They are the largest member of the homeless population and the ones that our safety nets should be helping. This is the group that The county and NGO’s are working tirelessly to help and are doing so. There are many success stories unfortunately we rarely hear about them as they are not as headline grabbing as the rest. These folks need our help, deserve our help, and by and large are getting our help. Sometimes they don’t get it as quick as they should, and we need to do a better job of matching the needs to the service providers.
Drug addicted and Mentally Ill – This is another area where our state legislators have let down our citizens. The decision was made that it is more damaging to the individual to involuntarily commit them to a facility that can help them than it is to let them die slowly on the street. As a result, mental institutions were closed, and mandatory involuntary drug treatment facilities are decried as inhumane. The solution for these two groups of people is not to continue to allow them to live in their addiction and mental illness. The solution is to place them in a place where they can get help and be required to receive that help. It is high time that our state legislatures work to find meaningful solutions to repair these lives. The drug addicted are a huge challenge because ultimately until they recognize their need to change, they will not change. Having lived this lifestyle I know people have to reach rock bottom before they will reach the realization that they need to change, and everybody’s rock bottom is different. Mandatory involuntary drug treatment facilities work because the drug addict is completely detoxed and then can evaluate with a clear mind where they’ve been.
Once you have addressed these three portions of the homeless population the only one left is the ones I call vagabonds. These are the folks that have no desire to live according to society’s rules. They should not be allowed to infringe on other people’s rights in the process. Often, they do just that, and when they do, city police departments should feel free to enforce the law and not feel like because they’re homeless they can’t.
10. Business Development vs. Preservation: As McMinnville continues to grow, how would you balance business development with preserving the town’s historic charm and local character?
This is a great question and for the downtown area unfortunately I don’t have good news for most residents. I believe this horse has not only already left the barn but it’s about 3 or 4 miles down the road. If we wanted to maintain the historic charm of the downtown, we should never have created Visit McMinnville, MDA nor made the downtown a historic district. All of these have led to a desire to develop and turn it into Napa Valley 2.0. The rest of the city of McMinnville is likely to also lose its historic charm and local character and that will be as a function of the state land use planning laws. The goal of the state land use planning laws is to create density wherever they can. Over time you’re going to see the old McMinnville be redeveloped and look more and more like some of the newer areas of McMinnville because the land use planning laws all but require us to do so. There is no longer a low density residential zone available in the state of Oregon. It may take 50 it may take 100 years but eventually all city land will be high density unless we change the land use planning laws at the state. The problem isn’t a balance between business development and preservation the problem is a balance between the demand for housing and preservation. There is no question that state land use planning laws favor density and housing.
11. Technology and Innovation: As technology evolves, how do you see McMinnville adopting innovative solutions to improve city services, create jobs, or enhance the quality of life for residents? What role should technology play in the city’s future development?
We are still using excel spreadsheets as part of our budget process and our municipal clerks are running papers from the front counter to the bailiff and vice versa. Those are just two examples of how far behind we are on the technology curve. I foresee a lot of adoption potential of processes and technology that will make our city workforce far more efficient and responsive to our residents needs. We will be implementing new software for the municipal courts and there is lots of discussions around doing the same for our financial department. It is only a matter of time that technology makes us more efficient and as we become more efficient that improves our ability to respond to residents needs. With technology of course comes risks and we have a solid IT department that is ensuring to the best of their ability that hacking is not an issue with the City of McMinnville.
In terms of job creation, I do not see that as a role for city governments to play. Our job is to ensure there is available land for job creators to do just that.
12. Community Engagement: How would you engage the McMinnville community in decision-making processes, especially when it comes to major city projects and initiatives?
This is an age-old question and I don’t think anybody has ever found a good answer. No matter how hard we try it seems that we fall short of communicating much needed information to our residents. For instance, I am in favor of preventing the city from assessing, collecting, and spending the money they were spending on a fire department when we had one. Most residents I’ve spoken to are unaware that that’s their intent much less that they agreed to let them do so when they agreed to move to a fire district. One of my fellow councilors worked his heart out to try to get the word out and despite all his effort it just doesn’t seem to make it into the collective of the public conscience. I do think we have a priorities problem when it comes to our communication. The last time I surveyed our pages for our committees they were woefully out of date. Yet we have these Iheart blasts about whatever social initiative is being pushed by the City. I think it’s easy for a City Councilor to fall in the trap of wanting to push my personal agenda rather than just do the right thing for the city residents. In that vein I think using all the tools that we have available to press messaging through the city is still the most effective way. I strove for the first two years to put every agenda up on my Facebook page and share it to the community page but found they garnered very few likes and views and so I quit doing so. There’s always a disconnect between local governments that are predominantly filled with meetings that most find boring and the residents who don’t realize major changes are coming upon them until they’re already underway. Whenever we have such changes, the city attempts to mail those directly impacted, they have citizen advisory committees they panel where they try to get affected stakeholders to the table, and we also have the public meeting process. These are still the best tools available, but I think as a City Councilor I can do a better job of also getting the word out through the various channels available to me.
13. Public Health and Safety: How should the city prepare for future public health crises, and what lessons do you believe McMinnville can take from the COVID-19 pandemic?
The first and the biggest way we can prepare for future public health crisis and frankly any potential crisis is to build up our reserve funds.
I think the biggest lesson we can take away from COVID-19 is that we need to allow more room for discourse. I am disheartened at the level of “shouting down” opposing points of view that I witnessed beginning in 2020. We used to be a country that placed a high value on diversity of thought but what I’ve witnessed has been the opposite. Some of the best solutions to problems are found when we put a group of people in a room that have a wide variety of thought and let them work through the problem. That did not happen with COVID. Some of the studies I’ve seen that compare total lives lost (COVID deaths, suicides, medical deaths because they were unable to get treatment such as for cancer, etc.) indicate that it’s debatable if we were better off shut down for a year or opened after a month of shutdown to flatten the curve. Comparing California to Texas on these stats is a case study and the approval numbers of the Governors of these two states as they came out of the pandemic tell the true story. What is not debatable is we lost billions upon billions of GDP, the damage to the workforce has taken four years to rebuild, and the damage to the supply chain is still trying to be fixed. We needed a better cost benefit analysis than we got. Every life is precious but somehow the teenagers committing suicide due to lack of interaction rated at a lower level than those dying of COVID. We missed the mark.
14. Arts and Culture: McMinnville has a vibrant arts scene. How would you support the continued growth of the arts and cultural programs in the city?
This is another area where our city doesn’t have money in the budget to address such projects. Fortunately, we have businesses that have stepped up and local arts lovers that have done the same. We have set aside areas throughout the city where art that has been acquired can be installed and you see them from Ben Franklin to Abraham Lincoln to “The Bolt” and many others. I will continue to support such projects.
15. Fiscal Responsibility: With limited resources and competing needs, how will you ensure fiscal responsibility while still meeting the needs of the community?
This is probably the most important question on the list. We politicians want to give everything to our constituents that they want. Much like a parent wants to give everything to their children that they want. The truth is sometimes you just can’t afford to give it to them. Elected officials are supposed to have the responsibility and maturity to recognize when we are trying to spend money that the citizenry simply can’t afford. For six years we have seen tax increase and fee increase after tax increase and fee increase. This led me to file a petition to minimize how much the city could assess on property taxes. What my fellow Councilors and the current Mayor want to give residents would make some residents lives better, but it will cost them, and I believe right now our residents are financially hurting. McMinnville is below the state median average for household income. We are not a rich community. As politicians we must make the tough decisions. As parents we instinctively know those tough decisions are when we must tell our children no. I’ve listened to City Council meetings where City Councilors are saying the tough decisions are to say yes to assessing more taxes on our residents. That is not my philosophy. I don’t think I can spend my fellow resident’s money better than they can so I’d rather they keep it.
Right now, our residents cannot afford any more money taken out of their wallets. The answer to your question is rather than assessing more fees and taxes it’s time that the City of McMinnville tightened their belts just like virtually every person I know is having to do in this tough economy. I made this promise in my first run, and I will continue to make it today: I will hold the line on all fees and taxes. You have my word.
It’s time people understood that we would not be having this crisis of funds at the state, county, and city level but for Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) Tier 1. Most of the taxes being raised at all levels is to fill the hole created by the PERS unfunded liability. In essence the citizens of this state are being hit by taxes and fees to pay for the retirement of the Tier 1 recipients. We should be outraged. Once again you can thank the legislature for making promises on behalf of you the citizens that broke the bank. They did it with land use planning and they did it with PERS.
Yamhill County News would like to thank Councilor Chris Chenoweth for providing answers to our questions.
Tomorrow’s article will feature Scott Cunningham, Ward 3 candidate.
Photo Credit: Yamhill County News File
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