Sean C. Morgan
The Sweet Home City Council last week appointed Diane Gerson to serve the remaining five months of a term held by Bruce Hobbs, who resigned after moving outside the city limits.
The council appointed Gerson, 80, in a 5-0 decision during its regular meeting on July 12.
Council members interviewed a total of six applicants during a special meeting prior to its regular meeting to interview the candidates.
The others were Jan Hufford, Lisa Pye, Andrew Allen, Theresa Howard and DawnMarie Rogers.
The council rated each candidate. Mayor Jim Gourley said Gerson and Allen finished in a tie with 56 points each. In a tiebreaker, the council selected Gerson with a 4-1 vote.
Choosing Gerson were James Goble, Ryan Underwood, Greg Mahler and Dave Trask. Jeff Goodwin chose Allen. The decision was not binding. It served as a consensus to take into the regular meeting. Goodwin was unable to stay and attend the regular meeting when the council officially voted.
Gerson will complete the term on Dec. 31. The position is one of four up for election in November.
Gerson has lived in the city for two years. Prior to that she made her home on the Upper Calapooia for some 20 years. A retired ele-mentary school principal, she has served on the Sweet Home School Board for seven years and is a board member for Sweet Home Economic Development Group.
Gerson is president of the FA chapter of the Philanthropic Educational Organization. She is chairwoman of the city Budget Committee and serves on the Library Board. She has served on the Linn County Commission on Children and Families and the Kidco Head Start Board of Directors. She has been president of the Friends of the Library and remains a member.
“I really want to be part of the solution, not the problem,” Gerson said. The forced retirement of the longtime City Manager Craig Martin in April was a red flag to her, especially following the council’s public meeting held at the Jim Riggs Community Center, shortly after the council’s decision to dismiss Martin.
“They didn’t really have a direction,” Gerson said. “But they didn’t like the direction he was going.”
She has questions about other recent council moves as well.
“I’m still not convinced about the purchase of (a new) City Hall,” Gerson said, although that decision was finalized last week. She didn’t vote on the issue after her appointment, she said, because she doesn’t vote until she knows everything she can about an issue.
Going forward, “obviously, getting the right city manager is important to me,” Gerson said. She is happy to see the council is going to work on its goals on Aug. 9. That’s something the council needs when it’s searching for a city manager. Manager candidates will want to know what they council’s goals are before they apply.
At the same time, in draft form, the council is looking at about four pages of goals, Gerson said. “They have too many directions, and they need to pull their ideas in. In other words, it’s sort of like throwing tomatoes on the wall.”
She thinks the council should pick several goals and work on them annually, she said, things that can be accomplished quickly.
Seven people ought to be able to agree on four goals, she said. She became focused on the council’s goals while serving as Budget Committee chairwoman this year. The draft goals were among the materials provided to committee members.
She wondered why the council couldn’t come to an agreement earlier this year.
Gerson also hopes to help the council pick up the slack in another area: community events and meetings.
She noted that no City Council members showed up at the Sweet Home Economic Development Group meeting on the Knife River property that may become the Ore-gon Jamboree’s permanent home or the Share Fair, in which numerous community organizations and agencies provided updates on their projects.
She realizes many of the councilors have regular jobs and cannot be involved in or attend everything.
But it’s also important that the councilors be out and about, she said. All of them don’t need to be at different events, and she can provide that link as a councilor.
“That got me to thinking: We have all these entities working to improve Sweet Home, but they’re not working together,” Gerson said. Each is kind of doing its own thing, although several of them are certainly working on improving cooperation.
If the council can adopt four goals, she said, perhaps that would help guide the other organizations.
Gerson said she is a process-oriented person. She was invited to serve on the SHEDG Board to help draft policies for the organization. While serving on the Sweet Home School Board, she provided attention to detail that prompted the board to seek her input on proposed policies long after she left the board.
That’s important with nonprofits too, she said. Often their officials aren’t aware of the requirements they face. Currently, she is involved in writing bylaws for her homeowners association, where she is serving on the board of directors.
“People often look at these as hindrances to getting things done,” Gerson said, but policies and procedures protect boards and their staff.
Gerson said her priority as a councilor is economic development.
Key to that is “understanding the compromise between property owner rights and the common good,” she said. “Everybody can’t just do what they want to do.”
Trash needs to be picked up, Gerson said. Improving downtown means enforcing or adding new rules. The city needs new sign and building maintenance rules without having to enforce a particular image.
Sweet Home needs RV parking to catch the many visitors who have a hard time finding a place to park their RVs so they can shop in Sweet Home, she said. Parking on the street is not an option for the large vehicles. When it has that kind of parking, Sweet Home needs to advertise it throughout the state.
Gerson said she will also be a voice for women and senior citizens. She sees more retired people moving here, and Sweet Home needs to realize that what they want is a nice town to live in.
Gerson grew up in Orange County, Calif. and graduated from Whittier College in 1958.
She has three children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Gerson and her late husband, Gus, arrived in Sweet Home in 1994 from Southern California, where they raised their children.
The Gersons came to the Sweet Home area after visiting their daughter, Alicia, who was living in Lebanon at the time. They saw a five-acre lot covered in blackberries but with 1,000 feet of Calapooia riverfront for sale.
Gus Gerson, a city boy who had served as director of parks and recreation for the city of Pasadena, Calif., had always dreamed of living in the country along a river. They moved to Sweet Home, where he also became quite active in public affairs. The new carvings at Shea Point are dedicated to his memory.