After a career in the car industry, Jeff Spink has set his sights on Tillamook County Board of Commissioners position number one, aiming to employ his business experience to manage the county.
In a recent interview with the Headlight Herald, Spink said that he would prioritize preserving Tillamook County’s natural-resource-based economy, promoting economic development and fiscal responsibility in county government.
“We’ve got to figure a way to get back,” Spink said about the county’s timber economy, “it’s sustainable, it’s a natural resource, it will grow back. Same thing with fishing, same thing with the farming community. We have resources here, we just need to make sure that they’re sustainable, survivable, that’s what made this county.”
Spink was born and raised in upstate New York and ended up in California while serving a tour of duty with the Air Force shortly after graduating high school. After discharge, Spink moved to southern California, where his father owned an automotive racing team, and began to pursue his dream of being a race car driver. Through the 1980s, Spink worked in car dealerships while competing as a driver and crewmember in various racing series in his free time.
After visiting friends in Lincoln City following a trip to negotiate a sponsorship contract for a professional cycling team with Nike, Spink made the decision to move to the Oregon coast in 1993.
Spink worked in car dealerships in Newport and Salem for several years, before starting the Oregon Coast Guide, a magazine promoting the coast, in 1996. For the next eight years, Spink ran the publication, before a major bike accident forced him to return to the car industry.
Since 2004, Spink has been the general sales manager at Tillamook Motor Company. Spink also served as a Marion County Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy for a decade and the cochair of Americans for Prosperity in Tillamook County in the 2010s.
An interest in government and desire to serve the community drove Spink to enter the race for commissioner after he was approached by a group recruiting candidates. “I’ve always been interested in government but not actively as a politician,” Spink said, “and so at my age I guess it’s like this opportunity may not come again. It’s not something I thought about or planned but I thought, ‘what the hell, I’ve had all kinds of adversity before and come out somewhat successful.’”
Spink said that his top priority in running for commissioner was to preserve the health of Tillamook County’s natural-resource economy and the way of life that accompanies it. Spink noted that as jobs in natural-resource dependent sectors disappeared, people who previously held those jobs were forced to move, siphoning talent and a sense of community from the area.
“We’re losing those skillsets, we’re losing basically a tax base because as those jobs curtail and get shrunk down these people are moving away,” Spink said. “So, we’re losing that whole part of our community base now and to get it back is not going to be easy and it’s going to be a slow process.”
Spink said that he would favor forming a coalition of counties to advocate against the recently approved habitat conservation plan during next year’s long session in Salem, in hopes of seeing the plan repealed and control of woodland sources given to counties.
Running the county in a fiscally responsible matter would be another priority for Spink, who said that the county must live within its means and avoid operating at a deficit. To achieve this, Spink said that he would look to control employee costs by streamlining processes and combining overlapping departments, mentioning the possibility of employing artificial intelligence technology for lower-level needs.
Spink mentioned the need to promote real estate development in the county as another focal point. He said that he would like to reassess fees and costs that the county levies to develop properties and to shorten the timeline for permit and plan approvals. Spink said that he would favor the creation of a liaison position to work with local utility companies to promote development and exploring state and federal grants to support infrastructure development necessary for further property developments.
Spink also weighed in on short-term rentals, saying that he supported family or individually owned properties but was wary of business interests purchasing blocks of homes. “My whole thing is I don’t want to see investment groups and big corporations buying blocks of houses just to turn into hotels,” Spink said. “I think it should be kind of a grassroots, small, mom-and-pop type thing.”
Another issue that Spink mentioned was addressing the closure of the U.S. Renal Care dialysis center in Tillamook. Spink said that the facility was needed in the community and that he would work to find grants or partnership opportunities to maintain the center’s operations.
Spink said that if elected, he would evaluate issues by soliciting multiple perspectives and using that feedback to guide his response. “If you look at five or six different perspectives you can kind of figure out what the core issue is gonna be and the one common problem that’s blocking everything up,” Spink said, “and that’s how I approach different decision-making processes.”
Beyond his platform, Spink said that he would emphasize listening to constituents and let their feedback inform his work as a commissioner.
“Everybody’s got an opinion, some of them are valid, some of them are not valid but they still have a voice and you have to take that accordingly and hopefully the decisions you make impact the positive in the community for future generations to come,” Spink said. “It’s not about me and it’s not about a legacy, because that’s not anything that I’m worried about, I just want to be able to do good for the community and the county.”
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