Sean C. Morgan
South Santiam Youth Watershed Council Coordinator Angela Clegg is serving as the city’s associate planner in the Community and Economic Development Department.
Clegg moved into the full-time position Tuesday, July 31, after working part time as a temporary employee while continuing to work with the Youth Watershed Council. She had served as the Park and Tree Committee chairwoman until going to work for the city earlier this year, and she serves on the Sweet Home School Board.
The city upgraded the department’s planning assistant position to planning associate with the departure of the planning assistant earlier this year for another job. The new position will start out supervising one position dedicated to parks and department support projects and assist the department director, Jerry Sorte, with various planning functions, including application reviews and staffing the Planning Commission and parks board.
“We’ve got a lot of volume coming through,” Sorte said about planning. At the same time, the department is between building officials, with the retirement of Mike Remesnick, and still working out its long-term plans for the building program.
The deparment also is moving forward with a number of projects in parks, Sorte said. Up next will be new restrooms at Sankey Park. The city is still working on building a footbridge across Ames Creek between the Jim Riggs Community Center and Sankey Park.
Sorte and his department are focused on economic development too, with the a new commercial exterior program just getting under way.
The Community and Economic Development Department also just took back the city’s code enforcement duties from the Police Department.
“Planning, especially with the code updates, could use up every moment of time,” Sorte said. By upgrading the assistant position to an associate position, it helps increase the department’s capacity.
Clegg, 46, also is a junior at Oregon State University, where she is pursuing a degree in environmental and economic policy with a minor in business and geographic information systems.
“I’ve been able to accomplish many things without that degree,” Clegg said, but it’s been a goal of hers for a long time and demonstrates to her children that they can achieve goals at any age.
As she leaves her position with the Watershed Council, she said, “I’m going to miss it. It was a very, very rewarding job. I’ll miss the kids.”
She’s spent four years with the current Youth Watershed Council crew, and that will be the hardest part of switching jobs, she added.
For the past seven years, she has worked closely with high school students on various Watershed Council projects, The group adopted Sankey Park and regularly monitors water and wildlife in Ames Creek.
Clegg intends to continue volunteering with the Youth Watershed Council, she said, noting that she used to volunteer for city activities and she’ll be flipping her roles with the two organizations.
Working as a temporary employee “gave me a good opportunity to see what it’s all about,” Clegg said, and she enjoyed it.
It’s a different career path than she expected, but that’s the way things have gone for her, Clegg said. She came to Sweet Home to do more “science stuff” and ended up taking on the Outdoor School program eight years ago and then the Youth Watershed Council seven years ago.
“It gave me a chance to get to know this community,” Clegg said. “I had already gotten to know many of the staff (at the city) here.”
Switching jobs is primarily about stability, Clegg said. Grant funding to support the Watershed programs is getting harder to find, and she wanted to be able to stay in Sweet Home longer term.
“This is a good town,” Clegg said. “I love the outdoors, so it helps, but I really like this community. I find this a very welcoming (community).”
She enjoys hunting and fishing, she said. “I love it here. I’ve acclimated to the climate too.”
When she goes home to the Boise area and finds temperatures of 104 or -8, it “about kills me. I’m officially a Pacific Northwesterner.”
Clegg was born and raised in the Nampa-Boise, Idaho, area. She graduated from Boise High School in 1990 and then worked for an architecture and engineering firm there, but she lost her job during cutbacks following the recession of 2008.
She used a grant for displaced workers to return to school, but for what she wanted to do, she needed to attend OSU. At the time, she knew people in the community and had visited off and on for upward of 20 years.
Her daughter, Payton Peterson, was close to graduating from high school, Clegg said, and she remained in Idaho. She moved to Sweet Home with her fourth-grade son, Grayson Johnston, who will be a junior next school year.
Her first job in Sweet Home was at the Bohemian Club. Five months later, she was working for the U.S. Forest Service Sweet Home Ranger District as biological technician in the fisheries department and was immediately sent to run the Outdoor School program.
Her Forest Service department worked closely with the South Santiam Watershed Council at the time, and she quickly jumped on board.
Since moving to the city, she said people have been generous with their time, and she’s looking forward to the change and volunteering in different ways.