Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Karen Billings, the newest member of the Sweet Home Planning Commission, supports growth, but wants to make sure it is carefully managed in Sweet Home.
Billings was appointed to the commission by the City Council on Dec. 12. Her first meeting with the commission was in January.
Billings is the principal broker for Santiam River Club as an independent contractor. She moved to Sweet Home from Colorado to take the position in August.
She previously lived in Sisters for many years, she said. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and earned her bachelor’s degree in business from Mills College. After college, she started out working as a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch, and then she got married and opened a mechanical business in California.
In the early 1980s, she moved to Central Oregon where she watched Bend and Sisters transform, she said. “Not that I’d like to see it like Bend, but I’d really like to see this town mature, and it really needs to mature.”
Billings moved to San Diego, Calif., where she operated a street sweeping and construction business. She sold that and moved to Colorado five years ago “for a change of lifestyle.” She bought a maintenance business, which she still owns.
“The company that (Santiam) hired for marketing is in Colorado, and they found me,” she said. She has kept up her real estate license in Oregon and California.
“It took some thinking,” she said of her decision to join the Santiam River Club operation. “I had to decide what to do with my business.”
She hired a manager to run the business while she moved to Sweet Home, which will keep her here for at least five years, she said.
“I was approached and asked” to serve on the commission, she said. “I thought about it. I thought it would be a good thing for me.”
She has previously seen two towns transform, and she is looking forward to seeing that happen in Sweet Home, she said. This time, she wants to be part of it.
“I think it’s close to happening,” she said. “I think that Santiam River Club will help. I think that’s going to bring in new blood. Some of the people buying here will want to start new business, new restaurants.”
Not everyone looking at Santiam will buy in Santiam, she said. Some of them will buy outlying property and commercial property.
“I think it’s just a matter of time,” she said. “Probably five years, Sweet Home will be a different place.”
Regarding planning, “I am not anti-growth,” she said. “I believe in controlled growth. I think growth is inevitable. If you don’t allow it and take charge of it, I think that growth becomes rebellious.
“People will do things they can squeeze by without doing it the right way.”
If cities take charge of the growth, with strict regulation, then growth can be orderly, enhancing the city and making it a more desirable place to live, she said.
Billings is committed to Sweet Home for the next five years, she said. She doesn’t know right now what she will do afterward, but “I love this town. I think that it has a lot of potential.”