Sean C. Morgan
Growth is critical to helping Sweet Home’s economy and improving the city, according to new Planning Commissioner Eva Jurney.
Jurney was appointed last month by the City Council to the Planning Commission to succeed Chairman Dick Meyers, who stepped down after serving for 38 years.
“The overall emphasis has to be on fostering growth,” Jurney said. “That’s the philosophy of it. That’s Brian’s (Hoffman, economic development director) job.”
Bringing businesses into Sweet Home that are compatible with the town and its Comprehensive Plan is complex, she said, and planning is a process providing guidelines to find the best solutions to individual situations that are presented.
“I don’t have a rigid plan,” Jurney said. “There are very clear guidelines. Sometimes rules do get in the way. This is the hard part. Do you want to go through the process of changing the rules? Is it still possible to change? That can be a long and arduous process, but there’s always a choice.”
As a planning commissioner, she sees herself making the choices that serve the greatest good of the community within the constraints of the law, she said.
The Planning Commission’s job isn’t to interfere, she said. “They enhance or remind people of limitations.”
She doesn’t support too much regulation on property use.
“I live in a development that has covenants, but I chose that,” Jurney said. “I don’t know that Sweet Home, as a town, needs to have restrictions or design standards. I could see maybe – a big maybe – in the business district.”
That deals with how Sweet Home attracts people and business, she said, but that leaves the question whether business have the money to implement such standards.
“It’s best if it comes from the base rather than a governing body,” Jurney said. “If you look at Main Street, there are a lot of vacant storefronts. Filling them up with business would be what Sweet Home needs more now.
“I want a solid foundation, and a good economic base. Then I’d be willing to look at facades. You can’t really have a thriving town without an economy and you don’t want everybody commuting to Corvallis.”
Jurney moved to Sweet Home from Corales, N.M., in May after she retired. Her husband, David, a retired football coach and high school teacher, moved here in April.
Corales is a suburb of Albuquerque and about the same size as Sweet Home, she said. “So I’m familiar and comfortable and choose to live in an environment that is neighborly and where people take pride in the village, which is the city of Sweet Home.”
Her husband retired in 2010 and spent his time fishing, Jurney said, but the fishing holes were in Colorado and too far away.
“We started looking around,” Jurney said. “A friend of ours said, ‘Why don’t you look at Oregon?’”
They found a little town with two lakes and a river. They visited in January to see the area at its worst, in the worst weather, and they decided to make a few trades.
“We came from brown, so green is beautiful,” Jurney said. “We did trade blue sky for gray sky and dry for wet.”
Jurney is a nurse with almost 40 years of experience. For some 25 years, she worked in staff development and clinical education with post-degree and post-licensed nurses at the University of New Mexico Hospital. The past three years she worked in a school of nursing with students who were working on their licenses.
“We had decided to move up here, and it was time to retire, so I did,” Jurney said. “Being retired is new for me, and I’m not a sit-around kind of person.”
She finds involvement important, she said. “I chose the one that seemed most important to me. I have time now.”
The Planning Commission has a learning curve, she said, but Community Development Director Carol Lewis has given her a robust orientation packet.
She has no previous planning experience, but she did serve on an advisory committee for the Corales Bosque, which stretches into Albuquerque, she said. A bosque is a riparian area, and the Corales Bosque is managed as a preserve. Development in those areas is structured. She was involved in it for eight years.
Jurney earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at the University of Colorado. She earned her master’s degree in nursing from the University of New Mexico. She is a “Colorado mountain girl,” growing up in Denver, Colo.
Jurney has three adult sons. Michael works for Google in New York City. Kyle is serving in the Army at Ft. Gordon, Ga. Levi is working on his Ph.D. at the University of Texas, Austin.
The Jurneys have been married for six years. They enjoy the outdoors, hiking and fishing. He fishes, and she cleans them. Now that she has time, she has been learning about sewing and quilting. She also is in a neighborhood book club. She enjoys nonfiction mostly, especially history, biology and geography. She also reads books from the bestseller lists. She is planning to start taking piano lessons again, and she enjoys yard work and decorating her home.
She also has two “wonderful” dogs and enjoys having animals around.