Sean C. Morgan
Laura Goodrich, who has worked for the City of Sweet Home in a variety of capacities as a RARE student during the last year, is staying on.
Goodrich has been hired as the city’s new planning services manager, succeeding Carol Lewis as the city’s planner. Her position is not a department head position but remains within the Community Development Department of which Lewis was the department head. Public Works Director Mike Adams has been supervising the functions of the department, including parks, building and planning, since Lewis retired in August 2013.
For the past year, Goodrich has worked for AmeriCorps in a Resource Assistance for Rural Environments (RARE) position funded by the city, Linn County and U.S. Forest Service. She officially started her new job Friday, Aug. 1.
For the past year, Lewis has contracted with the city as a consultant to provide planning services. Goodrich will continue working with her for a couple of months until Lewis’ contract ends.
Goodrich completed her master’s degree in urban and regional planning at Portland State University in June.
While working in Sweet Home for the past year, “I fell in love with the place,” Goodrich said. “I knew I was going to like it, but I never thought thought I’d stay. It’s an exciting place to be a part of.”
Six months into her term in the RARE position, she started looking for opportunities to stay here, she said.
The people with whom she has worked here helped start her attachment to Sweet Home, from the Forest Service personnel she worked with on the Community Forest project, to community activists such as Jo Ann McQueary, Goodrich said. She also enjoyed her working relationship with people like Julie Fisher in the Community Development Department and the other folks at City Hall, she said.
“Having these relationships already, it’s a seamless transition,” Goodrich said.
It’s also the projects, like the Livability Initiative, she said. “I got to learn more about the community, the good and the bad.”
Goodrich is a native of Michigan, where her father was a real estate developer. She went to work with him painting and remodeling and then entered real estate around Holt, Mich. Tired of Michigan winters, she relocated to South Carolina, where she spent about five years working with a developer on historic preservation projects.
That was where she had her “a-ha moment” and discovered planning, she told The New Era last year when she arrived as a RARE student. Working with the developer, she met her first planner and decided that was what she wanted to do, she said. She dived into the field and looked for a walkable community “in the best state,” she said.
“I think Oregon, out of anywhere, does it well.”
Her new duties will include planning and parks primarily. She will staff and support the Planning Commission, Tree Commission, Parks Board and Hazard Mitigation Committee meetings.
Adams will remain in charge of facilities and maintenance in the parks, Goodrich said, while she will handle the development of the parks, programming and projects.
She has been working with the Youth Conservation other community groups, including James Goble’s BMX track project, to clean up Sankey Park, she said. She also has helped run the popular “Movies in the Park” summer recreation activity this year.
Currently, Sweet Home has no economic development position, so she will also serve as a point of contact to help interested parties connect on economic development projects and goals.
While working here the past year, she was involved in the Livability Initiative, funded by the Conservation Fund and Federal Highway Administration. An assessment report is still to come, she said. She also worked on the South Santiam Community Forest. The biggest accomplishment there was developing a Declaration of Cooperation signed by numerous agencies with interests in the Sweet Home area.
The Community Forest is focused on two primary projects at this point, she said, connecting Sweet Home by trail to the Willamette National Forest and to develop citizen monitoring of the Sweet Home Ranger District’s Cool Soda Planning Area, which is under development. Individual projects from Cool Soda still must go through public input processes, in some cases, National Environmental Policy Act procedures.
Goodrich may be found in the city’s planning office or by calling (541) 367-8113.