Deschutes County commissioners debate GOP challengers

Two Republican Deschutes County commissioners and their GOP primary challengers discussed a variety of issues at a forum Tuesday evening.

Commissioner Tammy Baney holds the Position 3 seat and is being challenged by Patti Adair, while fellow Commissioner Tony DeBone in Position 1 is being challenged by Ed Barbeau.

Lynn Johns, the co-chair of the Central Oregon Association of Realtors’ political action committee, said she wants commissioners to address the major issues of housing.

“It’s a serious issue that we have here for workforce housing in Central Oregon,” Johns said. “People that work in our restaurants and hotels can’t afford to live in Bend.”

All four candidates agreed that housing is a major issue.

Baney said land use issues are something she’s been working on, such as Bend’s urban growth boundary dexpansion, and she believes housing is important to the vitality of a community.

“Many people feel, ‘well what can we do from a county perspective?’ and there are things we can do,” Baney said. “We can look at partnering with the city to make sure their UGB goes through (with state approval), which we just did. We work with the state of Oregon with their Affordable Housing Stability Council, which I sit on, to be able to bring dollars to our community.”

Adair said she wants to bring greater fiscal restraint to the county and address the increase in the property tax fund.

“People can’t afford to make their mortgage payments because we’ve had so many school bonds compounded with our property tax bills, and it’s really a problem for a lot of residents here,” Adair said. “We have a lot of people on fixed incomes.”

DeBone said he wants to expand business opportunities to allow people to live here.

“Also economic development, partnerships with EDCO, getting those trade and sector jobs settled in and creating those wages for people to be able to live on,” he said.

Barbeau said he thinks the land use permit process takes too long and that the county needs to focus on workforce housing and plan for future budgets and downturns.

“My plan is to stimulate the economy through business and other things, and I want to bring outdoor events to town, things like Spartan Ironman, and get some national attention here,” Barbeau said. “Then we can stimulate that economy, get some of the builders to work on work force housing, rather than large developments.”

All four candidates said they want to make Deschutes County a livable and vibrant place. Most in the crowd asked them how growth, revenue from marijuana businesses, and public safety will factor into that.

The winner of the two Republican primary races will advance to a fall campaign against the lone Democrats seeking each county commission position.

Democrat Amy Lowes is seeking the seat now held by DeBone, while James Cook is hoping to take Baney’s commission seat.

The voter registration deadline for the primary is next Tuesday and ballots go out later this month to be counted on May 15.