Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Gordon Kirbey Jr. is running for county commissioner because “I believe each person has a civic responsibility,” he said.
Kirbey, a Democrat, is facing Republican Will Tucker in a race for the Linn County Commissioner position three being vacated by Republican Cliff Wooten. Ballots will be mailed Oct. 17 for the Nov. 4 election.
He has been involved in First Alternative, a health food co-op in Corvallis. He has been active in the Albany Downtown Association and the Albany Visitors Association. He sits on the Central Albany Revitalization Agency board and is a Rotary Club member, among other activities.
“I do believe that being involved in your community is a good thing,” he said.
“In a nutshell, I want to be a commissioner that works together with other commissions and other government councils to share, to understand, to work together for a comprehensive good for the community, to Linn County.
“I’m really concerned about meth and its impact on this community. I believe that building more prisons is not the answer.”
Kirbey believes that if part of addiction is being a criminal, the addicts will pay that price, but “I do believe that as a community, we have an obligation to help that person become a productive member of our county.”
He is concerned about education, he said. He keeps hearing everyone saying “education is really a mess.”
And he explained some of that mess: The things that were available to him when he was in school are not available now, the extracurricular activities, electives, fine arts, painting and music.
Even football teams have to stand in parking lots selling coupons to buy uniforms and equipment, he said. “Meanwhile, I believe that people have abdicated their responsibility in the name of saving taxes.”
The bottom line is how much is spent on education, Kirbey said, but he doesn’t believe that education is a business.
The system teaches to a test as if one size fits all, he said. Not everyone learns the same way.
Seven- and 8-year-olds go to class, but there aren’t enough desks, he said. Textbooks are ratty, with old information.
Albany passed a bond to upgrade science labs, he said. The water in the labs ran red. The upgrade was to provide clear, running water.
“From this, a child’s supposed to be, ‘Wow, education is pretty cool,'” he said. “Where do the students get the impression we as a society value education?
“We’ve got to find a better way.”
The Willamette Valley has some of the most productive soils, he said, and the county should do everything it can to husband that resource, keeping farmers in business so the people can eat “instead of purchasing pie-in-the-sky RV parks.”
The county is planning to take a precious commodity, farmland, and build an RV park, he said. “Why is the county competing with private business?”
“There’s also this thing about creating family-wage jobs,” he said, but more and more people are on the street and driving dilapidated cars.
“I believe there has to be a way for the commissioners to be more involved with other, similar agencies and city governments so we at least have a sense of what our various goals are and what we’re trying to accomplish,” he said.
“I’ve never had the sense Albany and the commissioners have worked together to make the fair and expo center be all it could be.”
He doesn’t believe he can do anything as a commissioner without impacting the region, he said. Like Washington, Oregon and Idaho sometimes work together, he thinks the commissioners should work with the region.
He wants to provide more training opportunities at Linn-Benton Community College, allowing people to do something without necessarily getting a degree, he said, providing “the opportunity for people to get a better-paying, family wage job.”
“It seems the thing now is bio-science tech kinds of things,” he said. “It’s amazing how many companies all of the sudden are ‘green.’ I’m being cynical about it, but if it raises an awareness of what we do individually or how it impacts the community – Maybe the community should have more say about how your impact is going to be felt.”
In the early 1970s, the talk was about recycling, he said. In Linn County “we’re still trying to figure out composting on a basis that works.”
“They say we’ve got to have a way to make money (in recycling), but in the meantime, we just keep generating garbage,” he said. He would like to do something as a commissioner to address this while encouraging economic development.
He supports local businesses and shops locally instead of buying goods and shipping the money to someone else’s headquarters, he said. “I want economic development that utilizes the resources we have here (farming and ranching).”
Linn County also has plenty of business in technology, metals and food processing, he said. Those are all family wage jobs.
Food is central to the economy, he said. Some $2 billion in food is thrown away by supermarkets every year because it is shipped too far and displayed improperly. It only lasts a certain amount of time. Consumers throw away even more, and consumers often see a blemish and judge food inedible.
People could consume much more of the food society throws away and not waste it, he said. On top of it is the encouragement to waste even more. People don’t go home to eat now. They consume and then “when we’re done with it, we dispose of it. We just drop it.”
At the same time, Albany is wrestling with how to sweep its streets, he said.
Veterans affairs and benefits are important to Kirbey, he said. “I think it’s immoral how we disrespect vets, how we treat the people we say defended our country.”
When they need help, medical or food, “It all seems to boil down to finances,” he said. “The vet has served their purpose, so they’re not a priority,” he said. It’s like the students who don’t have desks. It’s the same problem.
His solution is to focus on these things, he said. “I raise my hand and sound my voice and say we’ve got to do more.
“Because I own my own business, I know what it’s like to find jobs, provide jobs” he said. “I know how important it is to provide education. You should vote for me because I have a passion for people. I have a passion for the county. I will work as hard at being a commissioner as I do owning my own business.
“I think I have a reputation of giving to the community, and I value that. I also believe I have more to give.”
He wanted to note that he supports the Extension Service and 4-H taxing district and the Linn Library League’s efforts to create a library district, he said. Both address education, learning and resource development.
Kirbey was the owner of Boccherini’s coffee shop in Albany. The shop closed its doors last weekend. He grew up as an Air Force “brat,” he said, and he served in the Air Force as an airborne radar technician fixing radar on large planes, like the KC-135 and B-52. He attained the rank of Airman First Class.
He moved to Albany in 1993 from the Portland area. He has lived along the West Coast since 1962.