The race for Position 4 on the Deschutes County Board of County Commissioners is the only contest on the jam-packed May 19 ballot that’s all but certain to be decided without moving on to the November general election. The leader of a prominent homeless housing nonprofit, Rick Russell, and a former firefighter and emergency responder in his third try for local office, Chet Wamboldt, are vying for the seat — one created by the 2024 ballot measure expanding the commission from three members to five.
The May election will determine the winner if either candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, which is guaranteed barring a write-in surprise.
For Russell, executive director of nonprofit Mountain View Community Development, the step into county politics was driven by what he sees as missed opportunities for Deschutes County to do more around housing and homelessness.
Despite a lack of campaign experience, Russell amassed a strong financial backing and support from elected leaders and the Deschutes Democrats.
He cited housing, homelessness, wildfire, water and mental health access as key issues.
“What all those issues have in common is that any one of them is too large for any one person or even a county government to solve by itself,” said Russell, who lives west of Redmond. “But each one of those issues can be addressed by building the right collaborations, and that’s the work that I’ve done.”
Russell has raised about $92,400, according to campaign finance records. That’s not including a recent $5,000 donation Russell said he received from the Central Oregon Builders Association, a housing development industry group. A construction trades union based in Central Oregon also donated $1,000. His largest donations include $12,000 from Bill Willits, a longtime Sisters developer who owns property seeking inclusion in the city’s urban growth boundary expansion, and $8,000 from Toby Bayard, an environmentalist fighting a proposed winery in her neighborhood north of Bend.
Meanwhile, Wamboldt, a former firefighter who works in risk management consulting, is making a third attempt at local office after losing bids for Bend La-Pine School Board in 2023 and Bend City Council in 2024, when he gained 27% of the vote in a three-way race.
He told the Source he’s gained name recognition each time around, and called county commissioner his “favorite office.” Wamboldt has the endorsement of the Deschutes Republicans, but is far behind Russell in fundraising, with only $9,000 on record. More than half of that came from a $5,000 donation on April 1 from Wayne Purcell, a former Bend hotel and golf course owner.
Wamboldt said he’s running on the idea of “keeping Deschutes a great place for families to grow.”
“County commissioners keep the gears running for our county,” said Wamboldt, who lives in Bend. “The fairgrounds, the sheriff’s department, all of these things are so important to the way that our county functions. For the most part, the commissioners have been keeping all of those departments in really good shape. I’m looking forward to continuing that trend, and also adding a new perspective to the county commission.”
Wildfire issues
Wamboldt said his former role with a fire department in a small city in California and as a disaster responder with the Federal Emergency Management Agency would help him lead the County on disaster preparedness efforts. He mentioned the need to build fire breaks in the Wildland-Urban Interface, the area where development meets the forest, to help stop wildfire from impinging on cities.
“We do some of that now, but we could definitely step up our program in that department,” Wamboldt told the Source.
Russell said the County could do more to help ease the insurance crisis plaguing homeowners in wildfire-prone areas.
“We have to work with our state partners in making sure when people create defensible space or home hardening, that the insurance company rewards that behavior,” Russell said.
Different approaches to homelessness
Russell has been a pastor for 20 years at Mountain View Community Fellowship in Redmond, but came into the public eye since the COVID-19 pandemic. His nonprofit created the region’s largest safe parking program for homeless people, which provides spaces for people to live in vehicles as they work their way toward housing. According to Russell, the program has rehoused more than 100 people. Russell’s nonprofit is also developing a 75-home supportive housing village for formerly homeless people in Redmond, the city’s first of that model.
A majority of Deschutes County commissioners have supported some of Russell’s projects by leasing County land to the nonprofit.
Russell said he sees more opportunity for a “system design” approach to homelessness — not only creating more shelters, transitional programs and permanent housing but making sure people are moving up the ladder and out of homelessness.
“We could open another three managed camps, fill them to capacity, but if no one’s moving out of those managed camps, we haven’t really provided a healthy solution for the community,” Russell said, referring to Deschutes County’s new east Redmond managed camp project.
Homelessness in Central Oregon continues to increase each year, according to the annual Point In Time Count.
Wamboldt blamed that partially on drug decriminalization in Oregon, and programs that he said provide services but no end date for moving out of homeless. He said he would support programs with a “tailored, catered step process” for moving people out.
“Most of the programs that we’ve been employing as a community simply don’t work,” Wamboldt said. “This idea of distributing resources indiscriminately doesn’t work for people.”
On housing, Wamboldt said he wants to remove restrictions on rural dwellings for rental housing, like ADUs, RVs and farm structures. He also wants to encourage a style of development known as “mini-hoods” — clusters of community-focused neighborhoods with smaller-footprint homes. He sees it as a way to add higher-density housing that’s more affordable, but make sure people still have their own house and yard.
“It’s our job as politicians, as county commissioners, to make sure that as we grow, we grow in the right way, and we develop our area so it caters to families,” Wamboldt said.
Russell added that he would prioritize public health services, like funding for the Deschutes County Stabilization Center and programs where new mothers can have nurses perform at-home visits in the first few months after childbirth.
“I think these are the points of care that are at risk if there isn’t a commissioner there ready to stand up for these issues and these kinds of programs,” Russell said.
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