OPINION: Reflecting on my time as Wilsonville's mayor

I am honored to have been elected Wilsonville's ninth mayor 3 ½ years ago. Public service is a great honor for which I am grateful. During this time, I enjoyed working with a team of intelligent and dedicated city councilors and a superb professional city manager, attorney and city staff.

The term began during global social upheaval and stress on many aspects of community life, punctuated with a global pandemic, a significant ice storm and a heat dome. I ran for mayor because of how I feel about this unique city and our shared potential to be a welcoming, clean, green, safe place to call home where everyone can find opportunity. It's been one of the most collaborative, revealing and deep experiences of my life, all about community. Our collective accomplishments that have brought me the most joy over the past 3 ½ years include appointing more than 100 people to our boards and commissions, with a focus on inclusion, diversity of thought, life experience and background. These boards and commissions serve our city in numerous ways, from establishment of the city's first public art policy and to the approval of new industrial sites and numerous housing developments. Good citizens are the riches of a city; we are fortunate to have so many willing to serve, making Wilsonville better through their commitment of time and talent.

Thanks to the Wilsonville-Investment-Now (WIN) Urban Renewal program approved by the prior council in 2020, we have now leveraged over $100,000,000 in private sector investments for Twist Bioscience to upgrade an older industrial building into a "factory of the future" and for other companies like Precision Countertops to build new manufacturing and commercial facilities. Our business thrives here, producing jobs and products that shape our future.

We addressed homelessness by developing a humane, values- and positive outcomes-based response to the state's requirement to meet overnight camping requirements. We completed an excellent state-of-the-art, future-ready Public Works building to serve our 27,000 residents and 1,200+ businesses. Later this fall, we'll break ground on a transit-oriented development near the SMART transit station on the west side, funded by valuable partnerships, including voter-approved Metro Housing Bond funds channeled through Clackamas County, 4% low-income tax credits and a $1.9 million legislative earmark to finance the construction of ground floor spaces for a SMART transit information center, Wilsonville Community Sharing and a coffee/pub gathering location for the community.

Due to the results of the May 21, 2024, election about term limits, I am now ineligible to run for a second term as mayor. My prior experience includes being elected to a four-year term on the City Council on November 6, 2012, after which the Council appointed me to fill the remaining 43 days in the term vacated months earlier due to the incumbent's family tragedy. By December of this year, I will have served eight years and 43 days since 2012, which translates to 12 years per Wilsonville's Term Limits measures passed in May 2020.

Wilsonville has big projects ahead of us in the remaining seven months of my term, with a focus on housing, new streets, industrial site readiness and transportation, all tangible steps towards a better future for our city. We'll monitor ongoing major street projects on Boeckman Road and 95th Street, and will review engineering and public engagement contracts for the Brown Road Improvement Project. We’re completing the development codes for Frog Pond East and South and the Housing Our Future project, both aimed at charting a course where Wilsonville's housing remains attainable and sustainable.

Wilsonville is one of the best places a person can find to live in Oregon, thanks to decades of visionary planning and community input engagement. My hope for the future is that the people who want it to remain so will take time to be involved, to find out what is true through first-hand information sources, and to be a part of a positive future.

One of my core values is always to leave the trail better than I found it. As I end my time as your mayor, with your help, it will continue to be a community with a bright future.

Thank you for the opportunity to be your mayor.