2A ܂ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2018 ܂ APPEAL TRIBUNE
Oregon tree shines bright at Capitol
Visitors photograph the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree, a noble fir from Oregon,
after a lighting ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
House Speaker Paul Ryan listens to Bridgette Harrington as she recites a poem
before the lighting of the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree.
SAUL LOEB, AFP/GETTY IMAGES
ERIK S. LESSER/ EPA-EFE
Council
Sears, 69, will begin his second term in
January. He is a Colorado State Univer
sity graduate with a degree in civil engi
neering. His 26year career with Marion
County included running solid waste
management, as well as directing the
Public Works Department for about six
years. In that role, he oversaw waste
management, planning, building in
spection, the county’s fleet, animal con
trol, code violations and more.
“When I retired 11 years ago, I had the
unique opportunity to give back to the
community,” he said. “I felt I understood
most of the jobs the city does – except,
perhaps, policing.”
Sears said he sees the world through
an engineer’s lens – which is “a blessing
and a curse” – and has made infrastruc
ture his focus. On the city’s transporta
tion plan committee, he’s now helping
craft the matrix by which projects are
ranked. He’s also on an advisory com
mittee for Highways 213 and 99E to the
Oregon Department of Transportation.
To him, Silverton’s most pressing in
frastructure needs are a new water
treatment plant, the installation of a
pump station to get water there from
Silver Creek in event of problems in Abi
qua Creek, dredging of Silverton Reser
voir to expand storage capacity, repairs
to aging sewer pipes, and an overhaul of
McClaine Street.
He’s expressed concern over the
openditch storm drainage system in
“Mill Town,” Silverton’s Northside Addi
tion and repeatedly proposed expand
ing the Urban Renewal District to in
clude parts of it so the neighborhood
can get extra funding for projects there.
Continued from Page 1A
Ninetyeight percent of those remain
ing ended up passing their medical ex
ams, and they remain a tightknit group,
Neideigh said.
Her career path led from cardiology
at Charleston Area Medical Center, to
student health at Western Oregon Uni
versity, to Kaiser Permanente in 2012,
where she now works nights and week
ends, seeing everything from “coughs
and colds” to “broken bones, stitches
and abscesses.”
Her husband, a firefighter, also works
nontraditional hours. The couple re
turned to Silverton from Salem in 2013
and now happily shares childrearing
duties with Neideigh’s two sisters and
their families, who also live in town.
She started attending council meet
ings when she grew concerned about
the traffic and demands on city infra
structure she expects new homes in the
Pioneer Subdivision will bring. She
wanted to make sure the city is only al
lowing “controlled, smart” growth be
cause “the decisions right now could
significantly affect the future of Silver
Jim Sears
Dana Smith
ton,” she said.
She also opposed the council’s pro
posal to change city code to allow for
more homeless housing communities
like the one envisioned by members of
St. Edward’s Episcopal Church. Instead
of changing language in the city’s code,
she favored a narrow conditionaluse
permit allowing cottages for homeless
women to be placed in the church’s
parking lot.
“I really felt like there were a lot of so
lutions that were designed to bring the
community together that were not tak
en advantage of,” she said. “There is no
diversity on our council, and we need
diversity to come to the best solution.”
Jim Sears
Returning council member Jim
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Councilor Dana Smith, 59, also
earned voters’ approval for a second
term. She plans to continue chairing the
Environmental Management Commit
tee and working on affordable housing
issues, as the council looks like to create
two working groups that will address
homelessness and affordable housing
separately.
Trained as a civil engineer, she sees
her familiarity with building practices
and codes as one of her best assets, she
said. She’s particularly interested in
promoting accessory dwelling units,
ADUs, as a “smaller solution with lower
impact on infrastructure” to bring hous
ing costs down for residents who can’t
afford rent and purchase prices in Sil
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“I think it’s an underutilized ap
proach,” she said. “No one’s promoting
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were not taken advantage
of. There is no diversity on
our council, and we need
diversity to come to the
best solution.”
Crystal Neideigh
Silverton city council member
ADUs. Bottom line, it’s not a corporate
model. People aren’t going to make a lot
of money by utilizing them, but it could
be a nice help for communities such as
ours.”
During her first term, Smith pushed
for environmentally friendly changes,
such as banning singleuse plastic bags,
Styrofoam and smoking in parks and
the downtown core area. A council vote
on the plastic bag ban is set to occur in
January, and language on the Styrofoam
ban is being crafted in committee.
On Facebook, Smith’s message to
voters after the election was, “Thank
you, Silverton voters. Now let’s get back
to work,” a circumspect reference, also,
to the resolution in 2017 of an ethics in
vestigation regarding a 2016 conflictof
interest complaint against her.
According to the Oregon Government
Ethics Commission, the investigation
settled with Smith’s payment of $100 for
failing to disclose she has an ownership
interest in a small company seeking to
build communal living cottages in town
before she took part in a council discus
sion about its sewer connection.
She’d recused herself from a prior
discussion about the cottage develop
ment and said later she thought the
sewer project’s size and scope – affect
ing more than a dozen households –
made it OK to for her to discuss.
“In the future, if something comes up
where I have an obvious financial stake,
I will step down (from the conversa
tion),” she said. “If it’s a bigger, citywide
issue – as I feel the sewer thing was – I
will participate. If I need to claim a pos
sible conflict of interest, then I know
what to say now.”
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