Governance Is a Team Effort
Lincoln County government is powered by more than 500 dedicated public employees. While three Commissioners constitute the governing authority of the County, no single Commissioner is responsible for the success of the organization.
Delivering legally required and locally desired services to our community — efficiently, effectively, and transparently — is the product of an entire workforce. Commissioners can have areas of emphasis. We can lean into personal projects. We can bring experience and perspective that can/should be leveraged. But implementation, innovation, and service delivery are always the result of the whole organization.
1. Modernizing Public Access to County Government
Before I became a commissioner, I spent 14 years as the Board of Commissioners’ Public Information Officer. One of my final major projects in that role was helping spearhead the County’s transition to a redesigned website and CivicClerk/CivicPlus meeting tools. When I took office and the County did not have a public information officer during my first months as commissioner, I stayed hands-on with implementation — meeting with vendor and implementation teams, helping connect the website and meeting system, working through staff workflows, and helping move the project toward regular use.
The result is a system capable of a much higher level of accessibility and transparency for residents and County employees: searchable agendas and packets, clearer meeting information, records archiving, livestream and remote-access tools, and the potential for a common public doorway into Board and advisory-body business. The County is not yet using the system to its full capability, and I continue to advocate for doing so.
Why it matters: Better public meetings start before the meeting: clear agendas, complete packets, easy access and a reliable public record.
2. A New Lincoln County Animal Shelter
Throughout 2023 and into 2024, I regularly participated in the County team developing a new Lincoln County Animal Shelter — working through site selection, land-use requirements, utilities, emergency needs, animal-care spaces and the practical details needed to turn the idea into a buildable project.
I joined the Board in funding and advancing the project and, as Chair in 2024, supported the selection of DSL Builders as Construction Manager/General Contractor. Once the project moved from development into professional preconstruction and construction, the need for weekly commissioner involvement naturally decreased. The result is a purpose-built County shelter in Waldport designed to improve animal care, staff efficiency and long-term animal services.
Why it matters: A commissioner’s value is sometimes most visible early: help turn a long-discussed need into a workable project, build the structure, and then let capable professionals carry construction forward.
3. A Dedicated Funding Source for County Parks
In 2023, I moved to approve Ordinance 531 and then moved to send Measure 21-220 to Lincoln County voters. The measure asked visitors to pay an additional 2% transient lodging tax, with the new revenue dedicated to County park improvements and operations.
Voters approved the measure by about 68%, creating an estimated $568,000 a year for maintaining and improving parks, access points and public recreation facilities. The County has also been modernizing park operations, including online reservations and better financial and occupancy tracking.
Why it matters: The Board identified a long-term service with an unstable funding base, developed a dedicated revenue option, and then let voters decide whether they wanted it.
4. Housing Partnerships: Helping Viable Projects Move
Housing is not one project, and County government is rarely the only builder. During my term, the Board used County resources to help partners move several different housing efforts forward.
That included the completed 12-unit Coast Vineyard Village project in Lincoln City, providing housing for households affected by the 2020 Echo Mountain wildfire and people experiencing housing instability; a $60,000 County grant helping advance Northwest Coastal Housing’s 30-unit Olalla Meadows project in Toledo; and an approximately $3.93 million 2026 County allocation toward the proposed 19-unit Housing Authority project on Marine Avenue in Lincoln City. Some of this work is complete and some remains underway.
Why it matters: The County does not have to build every home itself. It can help credible partners assemble enough land, money and public support to turn housing plans into real units.
5. Building a Countywide Homelessness Response System
Early in my term, I joined the Board in carrying forward Oregon’s HB 4123 homelessness-response pilot, including contracts to develop Lincoln County’s five-year strategic plan and coordinate the Countywide Homeless Advisory Board.
The resulting Where We Call Home plan brought Lincoln County, local cities, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, housing and service providers, and community partners around a common strategy: prevent homelessness where possible, reduce involuntary homelessness, improve navigation between services, and create clearer pathways from crisis to stable housing.
Why it matters: Homelessness cannot be solved one shelter bed or one agency at a time. The harder work is building a shared system that lets communities and providers act from the same map.
6. Winter Shelter and Housing Navigation
I joined the Board in launching and funding Lincoln County’s own winter-shelter operation and Community Shelter and Resource Center. The work gave people a safer place during dangerous weather while also connecting them with housing and services.
In its first season, the program reported keeping 230 unique people and 30 pets safe, making 57 housing referrals and helping 33 people reach housing placements. The County later expanded the shelter model to serve both Newport and Lincoln City.
Why it matters: Emergency shelter matters most when it becomes a doorway: safety tonight, and a better chance of reaching stable housing tomorrow.
7. Behavioral Health Deflection: Treatment Instead of a Revolving Door
In 2024, I participated for months in the team that developed Lincoln County’s response to Oregon’s HB 4002 deflection law. Working with Sheriff Curtis Landers, District Attorney Jenna Wallace, Judge Sheryl Bachart, behavioral-health providers, law enforcement and other partners, we developed a local pathway allowing eligible people involved in low-level drug possession to be connected with treatment and recovery services rather than relying only on prosecution.
Judge Bachart publicly described my participation as active and the local process as unusually collaborative. The program is now coordinated through the District Attorney’s Office with a state-funded Deflection Program Coordinator working with law enforcement and treatment providers.
Why it matters: Public safety and treatment do not have to be competing ideas. A well-built deflection pathway can hold people accountable while giving them a realistic route toward recovery.
8. Broadband: Building the Foundation
I participated in Lincoln County’s Broadband Advisory Team and supported the County’s Strategic Broadband Plan, regional planning and engineering work intended to identify service gaps and position local providers and communities for outside funding.
The County committed planning and matching resources while regional providers and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians pursued and received major infrastructure awards. I had hoped deployment would be farther along by now. This is important groundwork, not a claim that the County has solved broadband access.
Why it matters: Large infrastructure grants are often won years before residents see the final connection. Good governing work includes building the plan, partnerships and match that make later construction possible.
9. Building a More Prepared Lincoln County
I brought years of emergency public-information experience into my work as commissioner and have treated emergency management as an ongoing governing responsibility — preparing before an event, communicating during it and staying with recovery afterward. During my term, Lincoln County responded to serious drought in 2023, a federally declared winter-storm disaster in 2024, and another severe drought in 2025.
In May 2024, I took part in Lincoln County’s two-day Evacuation Assembly Point exercise, spent the overnight portion at the site with responders and partners, and represented the Board there. We even conducted a Board of Commissioners meeting from a tent at the exercise. County reporting says the program completed placement of Evacuation Assembly Point resources, held two wildfire tabletop exercises involving about 90 participants, and delivered nine wildfire-preparedness presentations around the county.
At the governance level, the Board continued investing in local preparedness grants, emergency-management staffing and NIMS compliance, and major public-safety communications improvements. In 2026 we approved an updated County Emergency Operations Plan covering drought, wildfire, flood, severe weather, earthquake, tsunami and other hazards.
Why it matters: The best emergency response starts before the emergency. Plans, radios, people, supplies, partnerships and public information have to be ready before ordinary systems fail.
10. Supporting Community Ideas with County Investment
Some of the most useful County investments begin with somebody outside County government bringing forward a workable idea. During this term, the Board continued using Community & Economic Development Grants, Nonprofit Social Service allocations and Emergency Preparedness Matching Grants to extend the reach of County resources through organizations already embedded in Lincoln County communities.
The documented 2023–2026 investment is more than $1.2 million through community/economic-development and nonprofit social-service programs alone, with emergency-preparedness grants in addition. Projects have included housing, food and shelter, youth and family services, accessible recreation, workforce projects, small-business support, cold storage, communications, backup power, emergency caches and water purification.
Why it matters: County government does not need to invent every solution. Sometimes its best role is helping a good community idea become possible.
11. Cleaning Up Abandoned RVs and Other Large Waste
The Board approved an Abandoned RV Abatement Program with an initial $500,000 from Solid Waste District reserves. The program brought together Lincoln County, cities, law enforcement and the U.S. Forest Service to address abandoned motorhomes, trailers, campers, boats and other large vehicles that are unusually expensive and difficult to dispose of.
By the FY 2025 budget cycle, County reporting showed 67 RVs, motorhomes, trailers, campers and boats removed and destroyed, with approximately 40–45 additional units projected or underway for FY 2026.
Why it matters: This is practical government: remove a costly public hazard, coordinate across jurisdictions and clean up places residents actually see and use.
12. Building Behavioral-Health Capacity
Lincoln County has been expanding behavioral-health infrastructure during my term, and I have supported the budgets, grants and agreements needed to move that work forward.
The work has included 18 transitional hotel rooms, the 28-unit Lighthouse housing project, and acquisition of a building intended for a Crisis Resolution Center with adjacent workforce housing. Some projects remain underway and have encountered permitting, capital and implementation challenges; they should not be presented as fully complete.
Why it matters: Behavioral-health services work better when the physical capacity exists: places to stabilize, recover, live and work — not just referrals to resources that are already full.
13. Building Better Tools for Leadership and a Stronger County Workplace
I have treated County workforce and organizational health as a governing responsibility, not simply an internal HR matter. I sought out CIS and Association of Oregon Counties training on risk, human resources, psychological safety and supervision; worked with leadership consultant Tim Rahschulte as we shaped management-team retreat training around customer-service leadership; and continued studying how organizational systems affect employees, retention, service quality and risk.
I also completed substantial formal professional development in mediation, conflict coaching and leadership, including 32 hours of Basic Mediation, 16 hours of Conflict Coaching and 16 hours of Arbinger Outward Mindset training. I repeatedly asked for collaborative Board/Management Team conversations where workforce, budget and organizational issues could be discussed together. The point is not the certificate count. County services depend on employees having clear expectations, functioning leadership and fair ways to surface and resolve problems.
Why it matters: Disagreement is unavoidable in public service. The responsibility is to build enough skill and structure to work through it without losing the people, relationships and service capacity the public depends on.
14. Making Governance and Public Deliberation Harder to Ignore
Some of my first-term work has focused on the machinery of representative government itself: Board rules, agenda access, packets, public comment, minutes, authority, financial information, open deliberation and equal commissioner access to the information needed to represent the public.
I repeatedly requested comprehensive written Board operating rules and clearer public processes for how an issue reaches the agenda, how the chair and administration exercise authority, how public comment works, and how residents can follow a decision before it is made. When requests continued to stall, I put priority items directly into the public record, including screen-sharing a ten-item governance list at the September 2, 2026 Board meeting.
Why it matters: Structure is not paperwork. It is the public’s assurance that decisions are understandable, participants know the rules, and access does not depend on personalities or unwritten practice.
15. Supporting Veterans Services That Bring Resources Home
Lincoln County Veterans Services has helped local veterans and their families secure benefits they earned, and I have supported the County program, its budget and the effort to create a more stable long-term funding base.
Recent County reporting identified more than $193,000 in new monthly veteran benefits, approximately $563,000 in retroactive benefits, and an estimated more than $2.5 million flowing into Lincoln County — a reported return of more than 10-to-1 compared with the County program budget. In 2025, voters also approved a five-year dedicated levy for Veterans Services.
Why it matters: A relatively small County service can return millions of outside dollars directly to local households while helping veterans navigate systems that are difficult to navigate alone.
16. Representing Lincoln County in Forest and Natural-Resource Policy
I have spent substantial time representing Lincoln County in forestry discussions through the Forest Trust Land Advisory Committee, O&C lands work, the Oregon Small Woodlands Association, Habitat Conservation Plan discussions and federal BLM coordination.
This work is environmental and financial. State forest management generates revenue for counties, schools and local taxing districts. Lincoln County received about $2.58 million from Board of Forestry lands in FY2024 and $1.1 million in FY2025 alone. Federal Secure Rural Schools funding also connects forest policy to local government through Title I funding for roads and schools, Title II natural-resource projects and Title III county projects.
That is why having Lincoln County represented in these discussions matters. Forest policy affects habitat and stewardship, but it also affects the resources available to local communities. My work has included pushing for a clearer County role in BLM planning and continuing to engage in difficult discussions about how working forests, conservation and long-term fiscal sustainability fit together.
Why it matters: Forest policy is not remote from county government. It affects the landscape we inherit and the public resources our communities depend on.
17. Climate Action and Environmental Stewardship
My approach has been that County government should look at its own practices before telling the community what it should do. That was an important part of continuing Lincoln County’s earlier Climate Change Partnership work with Public Health and staff including Marianne Seifert.
The point was not simply to produce another climate document. It was to keep the County learning: reducing waste where possible, examining our own impacts, bringing employees into the discussion and understanding how changing environmental conditions affect public health, water, forests, emergency preparedness, infrastructure and the communities we serve.
That work expanded into climate education, Lunch & Learns, recycling modernization, water and watershed discussions, sustainable seafood, public lands and ocean issues. Lincoln County’s earlier commitment specifically envisioned an ongoing partnership among governments, residents, businesses, the Siletz Tribe and community organizations rather than a one-time report.
Why it matters: Environmental responsibility starts with understanding our own organization, reducing unnecessary impacts and preparing intelligently for the conditions our community is actually experiencing.
18. Responding to the South Beaver Creek Herbicide Concern
The South Beaver Creek issue raised a difficult question rather than an easy one. Herbicides can reduce labor and vegetation-management costs in forestry, agriculture and even County roadside maintenance. Those are legitimate considerations, particularly when public and private budgets are tight.
At the same time, residents raised serious concerns about aerial herbicide application near drinking-water resources and about potential impacts on people, wildlife and the surrounding landscape. The County did not have the authority simply to prohibit the proposed operation.
I stayed engaged with residents, forestry officials, the Seal Rock Water District and others rather than treating the jurisdictional limitation as the end of the conversation. Ultimately, the landowner voluntarily changed the planned helicopter application to a ground application. My contemporaneous public record documented that change and the continuing discussion about forest practices around community water supplies.
Why it matters: Good environmental policy requires taking both practical land-management needs and legitimate health and environmental concerns seriously — and looking for ways to reduce harm when possible.
19. Reducing Wildfire Risk Through Coordinated Fireworks Regulation
Local fire chiefs and the Lincoln County Fire Defense Board came to the County concerned about wildfire risk and the problems created when neighboring jurisdictions took different approaches to fireworks.
I did not go looking for an issue on which to prohibit something people enjoy. Fireworks are popular. But when the professionals responsible for protecting communities from fire tell elected officials that a preventable risk needs to be addressed, our responsibility is to listen and make the decision.
The Board adopted Ordinance 532, restricting the sale, possession and use of consumer fireworks in unincorporated Lincoln County while retaining permitted public displays. The larger accomplishment was also interjurisdictional: fire agencies identifying a shared risk, local governments working toward greater consistency, and elected officials accepting responsibility for the policy decision.
Why it matters: Public safety sometimes requires making a difficult decision before an emergency occurs — and doing it as consistently across jurisdictional lines as possible.
20. Building and Defending Lincoln County’s Short-Term Rental Framework
Short-term rentals sit at the intersection of several competing County interests. They support Lincoln County’s visitor economy and generate transient lodging tax revenue — currently 12% on taxable lodging in unincorporated Lincoln County. At the same time, their concentration can affect neighborhood livability, infrastructure and the availability of homes for people who live and work here.
In my first months as commissioner, the Board implemented seven geographic subareas and licensing limits under the County’s STR framework. That regulatory system then continued through years of litigation before the Oregon Court of Appeals provided substantial clarification of the County’s authority in 2026.
There is an environmental-health component too. In unincorporated areas, many properties rely on onsite septic systems, and Lincoln County’s STR rules require an authorized evaluation of those systems as part of licensing.
The work is not finished. The next responsibility is to evaluate what the regulations have actually accomplished: their effect on neighborhoods and housing, the economic value STRs provide, their effect on infrastructure and whether the rules are producing the balance we intended.
Why it matters: Short-term rentals are simultaneously a housing, neighborhood, tourism, revenue and environmental-health issue. The job is not simply to regulate them — it is to regulate them well.
21. Strengthening Code Enforcement and Neighborhood Livability
Persistent code violations can become environmental, health, fire and neighborhood problems. During my term, County departments worked together to strengthen a system involving Planning, Environmental Health, septic, Solid Waste, law enforcement, building officials and County Counsel.
That work produced Ordinance 533 in February 2024. While serving as Board Chair, I opened the public hearing and moved approval of the ordinance. The new framework strengthened the County’s ability to use fines, liens, nuisance-abatement costs and a formal hearing process.
I also attended community meetings in Siletz around code-enforcement concerns and later asked for a broader review of how the program was functioning.
Why it matters: A rule has little value if serious continuing violations have no practical consequence. Enforcement should be fair, understandable and capable of getting properties back into compliance.
22. Protecting Lincoln County’s Health and Human Services Safety Net
Health and Human Services is a major part of Lincoln County government, but much of that work is supported through federal, state and other program-specific funding rather than simply competing for the same General Fund dollars as every other County service.
That funding brings an extraordinary range of services into a rural and medically underserved community. Lincoln County operates primary-care clinics in Newport, Lincoln City and Waldport and four School-Based Health Centers in Newport, Lincoln City, Toledo and Waldport. The school clinics provide physical, mental and preventive health services to students regardless of insurance status or ability to pay.
These are professional health services delivered by licensed providers, not a lesser tier of care because they are part of the safety net. HHS also reaches far beyond primary care: behavioral health, maternal and family health, WIC, developmental-disability services, communicable-disease response, environmental health, addiction treatment, prevention and disaster-related services all contribute to the health and safety of Lincoln County.
During my term, the County strengthened school-based clinic coverage, moved the Lincoln City primary-care clinic to a more accessible location, expanded addiction treatment and continued substantial maternal-child and public-health work. In 2024 alone, Maternal, Child and Family Health reported 2,721 home visits, while Environmental Health completed more than 1,100 food, pool and lodging inspections.
My role as commissioner is to help protect and govern that capacity — understand how it is funded, ask whether services are reaching people, and make sure this important rural safety net remains sustainable.
Why it matters: A community is more livable and more resilient when children, families, older adults and vulnerable residents can get professional care and essential services close to home.