Sean C. Morgan
Having enjoyed raising his family in Sweet Home, Jeff Parker intends to give back to his community by serving on the city’s Planning Commission.
The council appointed him to the position last week.
Parker, 46, grew up in Salem, graduating from North Salem High School in 1991. He attended Chemeketa Community College.
He moved to the Sweet Home area with his family in 2003 when he took a job in maintenance at Camp Tadmor, located of McDowell Creek Road north of Sweet Home.
He and his family started attending church at Community Chapel and fell in love with the Sweet Home community.
Parker and his wife, Jodi, have four children: Lilly, 21; Wesley, 19; Ella, 17; and Grace 14. Two of their children have graduated from high school in Sweet Home, he said. Their third graduates this year.
Parker worked as a general contractor and landscaper off and on for the past 25 years, designing houses on the side.
For the past two years, he has owned and operated Empire Turf Equipment, a distributor for Allett, an English mower manufacturer. Prior to that, he worked as specialized maintenance lead with the Sweet Home School District for a couple of years.
He decided to apply to serve on the Planning Commission “just to give back to the community,” he said. “We’ve gotten a lot out of living here.”
With his background in the private sector, “it’s something I felt I had some input to put back in,” Parker said, adding that he believes he can serve as a bridge between citizens and homeowners and the city.
He would like to ensure that “the city can be tolerant of change and the way things are changing,” noting that it was doing so when in recent years, it changed the regulation of fence height from 6 feet to 7 feet maximum.
Many ordinances are out of date, antiquated, he said. He would like to help address that as homeowners come in looking for variances to those ordinances.
“There’s wiggle room in everything,” Parker said. “Things are not as black and white as they seem.”
He would like to find solutions that make both the applicants and the city happy, he said. Maybe the property owner doesn’t get everything the owner wants, but maybe it’s 60 or 70 percent of what the owner wants.
As the city develops, “I’d like to see some of the houses spread out a little bit more,” Parker said. “I think we’re starting to build on top of each other.”
Eaves don’t count against setback requirements, Parker said, but those setback requirements are important, particularly in relation to fires and keeping fire from spreading among structures.
It also improves privacy, he said.
“I’ve never been a fan of infilling or flag-lotting,” Parker said, adding that he believes that leads to privacy problems as neighbors end up looking through each other’s windows.
While he would like to spread out single-family housing, he would like to see more space available for higher density apartment housing around the downtown core, which is where higher densities are historically found, Parker said, noting the high cost of rent and scarcity of rental units.