Like a lot of the races for the Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners this May, the one for Position 5 is a crowded field. Voters will see four names on their ballots for this seat — one of two seats that are being added after voters previously moved to expand the county commission. If any one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote this May, they get the seat. But that might be a tall order, given the number of options here — largely viable ones at that.
Sisters Mayor Jennifer Letz is the only one who’s currently a local elected official, but she entered the race rather late. During our endorsement interview, she was less prepared than either Rob Imhoff, a local business owner, or Morgan Schmidt, who’s spent the last 20 years as a pastor, activist and nonprofit executive director. We would have liked to see more concrete ideas about county-specific issues from Letz, given her background. As the leader who helped usher in new home-hardening codes around wildfire in Sisters, we know she’s capable of more.
Both Schmidt and Imhoff have attended the Deschutes County College, which allows residents to learn more about their counties. That education was on full display during our interview. We liked Imhoff’s ideas to bring more dollars into the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center by building a sports complex that could sell sponsorships to pay for itself. (That idea, we soon discovered, is also being touted by other candidates in this vast field of county commissioner candidates.) From Schmidt, we liked her idea to create an in-house ombudsman’s office to handle internal investigations — like the ones that happened often during the tenures of recent sheriffs. These were both examples of creative thinking that could help the County work through some of its current issues.
Schmidt differentiated herself from Imhoff in a number of realms, but where she really differed was on the topic of homelessness, and how to handle it at the county level. Imhoff is advocating for a six-mile “UGB buffer” around Central Oregon cities, where homeless camping would be banned. That sounds good as it pertains to concerns around wildfire – except that it would be difficult to enforce in practice, and, as Schmidt pointed out, would only push people farther into the forests, or back into the cities, where County officials wouldn’t have to deal with them at all. Schmidt has a more realistic view of the issue: safe camping and safe parking programs are not what anyone wants, in the most idealistic view of the world — one where no one is experiencing homelessness — but in the real version, people need safe places to be, to avoid the nightmares of illegal dumping, unsanitary conditions and the threat of fires for the entire community. The County, as the body that handles public and behavioral health, the sheriff’s office, land use and the district attorney’s office, is in a position to lead on helping those experiencing homelessness, and the housing affordability crisis, to boot. We are overdue for leadership that is ready to address the issue, not push it further out of view.
While Letz has a proven track record in Sisters, and Imhoff has ideas that would bring a positive contribution somewhere in local government, our endorsement in this May primary goes to Schmidt.
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