The Local Lens – Episode 1 – Tony DeBone Interview
EDITOR'S NOTE: In this episode of The Local Lens, Spencer Sacks interviews current Deschutes County Commissioner Tony DeBone, who is running for reelection.
Spencer Sacks:
What’s the biggest problem facing our county right now?
Tony DeBone:
Well, Deschutes County is a pretty happy, healthy place financially, and a little bit of growth makes it a more comfortable place to be than some other jurisdictions these days. So yeah, the biggest topics we’re working on—siting the next landfill. It doesn’t, you know, just go do it. But, I mean, that’s land use in the state of Oregon—a big, big hot topic—and staying within our means. You know, the cost of doing business is going up. We’ve got wage studies and contract negotiations, and we want to pay everybody well for the great work they do. But the cost of business is almost exceeding the income, so we need to work real hard to make sure that income and expense line does not cross.
Spencer Sacks:
So you brought up land use, and like you said, it is one of the biggest hot-button issues in the state, let alone our county. You know, we’ve seen competing visions of how we want to handle that growth going forward. If you were—well, you’re already in the seat—but going into the next election, what does that mean to you in your ideal world?
Tony DeBone:
So it came to me recently, the concept that, you know, when Bend went from 50 to 70 to 80 to 100,000 people, maybe that was big enough, because everybody loves it. In the city of Bend, I’m referring very specifically. The city of Redmond is 40,000 people. They have some urban expansion areas that they’re growing into, so they’re going to work their way from 40 to 50,000 people at some point. So the land use system requires an urban growth expansion plan. The city of Bend just did that, and now they’re growing into that. But do we want Bend to grow even more? We all love the idea of being able to leave the city, see the rural areas, mountain views, and enter the next city. That’s the vision of Oregon here. But I am a true believer that we probably need to open up that land use book and take a look at some things. We’ve got a destination resort, Thornburgh, that was approved before I got in office. Twenty years ago it was approved, and it’s been bouncing around in the appeals process for all these years, which is a real shame. And then sometimes there are rural rezones from resource to non-resource lands, but we truly have land that’s not productive farmland here. What do we do with it? So there are conversations all around that. Now that I have some experience in the field of battle—because we’re making decisions and they get appealed, and then they come back and forth—I’ve got thoughts on that. And I’d love to just, as I say, crack open that land use book and look at what we might want to do differently.
Spencer Sacks:
What would you do on that land?
Tony DeBone:
Well, so the idea—the vision—would be wonderful. You know, three- and five-acre rural parcels, a house and a small shop and some horses, right? I mean, so we’ve got exclusive farm use–zoned land that people want to put a non-farm dwelling on, because that’s the only path you have. And I could talk about this all day—non-farm dwelling. Or if you rezoned it, you could rezone it to multiple-use agriculture, and then you could have a house and a shop and some animals on it. But we basically stopped all that from our land use system. That’s—it’s 50 years old, 55 years old now. And, you know, what’s the next level of that? And then there’s a lot of open space in Eastern Oregon, too. And I’m not saying sprawl everywhere, but there are opportunities there also.
Spencer Sacks:
So one of the biggest concerns that people have is the rise in housing costs, right—not just in terms of buying, but in terms of building. What can be done to alleviate those costs and reduce them to make it more affordable, not just to buy, but also to build?
Tony DeBone:
Yeah, so one of the things I think of is, you know, the Great Recession. One hundred years ago—the Depression, I mean—100 years ago, yeah. And there have been these big notches in inflation, you know, around World War II. After World War II, everything just gets more expensive. We took a step, right? Wages are sticky. We’re not going to go backwards on wages. Nobody wants to see that. So we need to build into our new reality that everything is this expensive now. But there will be market shifts and adjustments, and hopefully not a bad financial situation that drops the floor out from under us. But we’re going to have to build into the new environment we have. And that’s what I say—interest rates, the cost of construction, labor—all that. All of a sudden, it’s going to align at some point, and it’s going to be go-time for the next generation, for a younger family waiting for that next purchase. All that’s going to start to happen. So I don’t know that we’re going to make it go backwards unless we have a bad financial situation, which would readjust the market too. But yeah, the city of La Pine has, as I say, a bunch of land inside the urban growth boundary. They don’t even have to expand—just make a plan and go build some houses. Redmond’s growing out. Bend has the urban expansion. So the plate is set for the next generation of building and homeownership. But it’s expensive, I know, and nobody’s got a magic ball on that one, I don’t think.
Spencer Sacks:
So you’re going to be—if you get elected again—you’d be going from a three-person council to a five-person commission. How would you work with those extra seats to make sure that the county is still prepared as we get into wildfire season?
Tony DeBone:
We’re a growing county—about 210,000 people—and most of these medium-sized counties, referring to Lane County, Marion County, Jackson County, you know, we’re getting to be one of those bigger mid-size counties. So going to five is fine. You know, people want their commissioners—let’s do this. A five-person board is pretty standard, though. You talk policy and make a decision. So really, my goal would be to make sure that five-person board is working together in a healthy fashion. Because if it really becomes a split board, where there are the people making the decisions and the people who aren’t asked their opinions because they’re not in the majority, that would be bad. I did work on a five-person board down in La Pine at the park and recreation district years ago. I remember one day me and one of the dads—we were making a decision. We were fathers at the time, that’s why we were on the board. And we made a decision, and we went two different ways. He wanted to go this way, I wanted to go that way. I’m like, oh, how did this happen? But we talked it out, we came to a decision with the five people on the board, and we respected the board’s decision, and then we moved forward. So there are ways to do that. It’s very common.
Spencer Sacks:
So another big issue is homelessness, and we’ve seen that percentage continue to rise—the number of people experiencing homelessness. Just last year, the point-in-time count was 2,108 people. That’s been growing for the last seven to eight years. How do we curb that growth?
Tony DeBone:
So we need to reset the whole thing here, and there are reasons we’re here, though. So remember, we legalized marijuana—and I’m not judging about marijuana—but people came to Oregon because we did that. We decriminalized drugs, and then COVID happened. So it’s like we kept getting compounded on this situation. And there’s all kinds of a spectrum of issues there, but it kind of added to our unsanctioned long-term camping on public lands around our cities and, in some locations, on city and county land. So we need to reset this whole thing, and it needs to start at the governor’s office. We need a partnership that gets real clear. I always think of it as thirds: you know, medically fragile, elderly people who are not going to get back into the economy and be able to fend for themselves, per se; people that just need a hand up and addiction services—move forward, please come back to the economy; and a third who are just people kind of hanging out. One of the terms could be “free-range people.” The mayor down in La Pine at the time, Dan Richard, said that one day—free-range people out there too. I was like, oh, is that a mean or rude statement? But it’s not. There’s just a set of people who are just hanging out. So we need to reset this. I have always thought a long-term visitor area would be an opportunity—just a defined place, low-cost, take on your own responsibility, living by community norms—not disassembling vehicles as a side project, not cutting down the trees around you and selling the wood. Living by community norms. A long-term visitor area. I haven’t been able to get traction— a lot of other elected officials are like, no, we can’t do that. It’s like, we’ve never even studied it or tried it. So this is my opportunity, running for office, to mention that again.
Spencer Sacks:
So what does that look like, though, on a county level? Because, you know, you said that has to start at the top with the governor, but this isn’t the governor’s race—this is the commissioner’s race. What can be done in the county?
Tony DeBone:
It fits right back into our land use system. We’re breaking the law. I’m a sitting commissioner. I’ve taken an oath of office to the state of Oregon and the United States of America. The land use laws say that we’re not allowed to allow people to live on resource land outside of a city. We’re doing it north of Bend and on the east side of Redmond, but with a choice of the board of commissioners. That’s why I say we need help here. So then, you know, we’ve bought motels—the city of Redmond, Shepherd’s House, Bethlehem Inn—we keep adding more services, and the problem is getting worse. That’s why I say we need to reset this. I’m ready to be a leader in this, but we need some elected officials who are ready to look at this. I’ve called the governor’s office and said, “Hey, how are we going to partner on this? Where are we going to go with this?” It’s not just in Deschutes County. You drive into Salem, you get on the highway, and you pull right in, and there are people all over the side of the road over there. We need partnership at multiple levels of government. The ODOT right-of-way is the situation here in Bend—people setting up their tents on the roundabouts, getting on and off 97. It happens in Salem too. So if one county does it, and we really get organized and push people away—because not everybody’s going to participate—all of a sudden, we’re just pushing them to another part, another county, another part of the state. And I’m not judging anybody. That’s why a long-term visitor area—we’ve got public lands all over the place. You can stay out in the woods for two weeks legally, no problem. But we’ve figured out what we’re going to do—and we haven’t. We haven’t gotten serious, other than dropping money in and empowering more community services. We haven’t really gotten there yet.
Spencer Sacks:
So one of the big things—and you obviously made a decision on it—is this county map. Are you still in support of it as drawn and as written, or do you think it could use some tweaks and changes?
Tony DeBone:
So yeah, the five-person map—five districts. So you take 200,000 and divide it by five, you end up with about 40,000. So obviously a little bit more than that with the population. But five districts, 40-something thousand—the map kind of makes itself. You take Bend, which is 100,000, and you either cut it north and south, east and west, or a donut and a donut hole, which has been done before. And the group chose to go east and west. So 40,000, 40,000. You take the city of Redmond, which is about 40,000—you define the district. You take Sisters and the rural areas around it, out to Redmond and the north part of Bend—that’s 40,000. You take La Pine, you go up to the bottom of Bend—that’s 40,000. So there were only about six precincts that were really in play that the committee was talking about, because the map kind of makes itself. So then, as I say, it’s one of the most partisan things you can do, though, because people want an advantage. They think the other side has an advantage. The map kind of made itself, and the reasonable people—two of them that I appointed to that committee—chose to publish that map. They handed it back to the board of commissioners. It’s up to the voters at this time. It’s not like I’m going to have an opinion about wanting to edit the map, so the voters in November will be able to either pass that map or not. And if it doesn’t pass, who knows how long it’ll be before we talk about districts again?
