Sean C. Morgan
Dec. 31 will mark the official end of Mayor Jim Gourley’s 24-year career as a member of the Sweet Home City Council.
The city will host a farewell reception for Gourley from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 16, in the City Hall Annex, located behind City Hall, 1140 12th Ave., and he led his final regular council meeting Tuesday.
Gourley says he would like to start concentrating on other things after such a long tenure with the council, requiring many hours and days of service each month.
He first won office in 1992.
“We had the timber supply issues,” he said. “We had a job crisis. We had been working on that for awhile and kind of how to keep the community going forward.”
The city was also dealing with funding issues related to 1990’s Measure 5, which capped property tax rates, and then further property tax limits in measures 47 and 50 during the mid-1990s.
Gourley recalled how the council had to deal with budget crunches during that time. He joined the council at a time it was expanding the Wastewater Treatment Plant to address inflow and infiltration issues that overload the plant. The city has continued to deal with that issue since then and is now considering another expansion of the plant.
“I wanted to start being more involved in my community,” Gourley said. “I felt that the best way to do that was to start working with the community to move forward with jobs and protect the jobs we had.”
The council’s still seeking and working on solutions to that problem today today.
“I think we need to concentrate more on how to work regionally on jobs, which is what we’ve started doing with some of these regional councils,” Gourley said. “I think we’re struggling, but we have a plan. We’re moving forward in the right direction.
“We have more people on board than we’ve ever had. We have great opportunities, and I think we can make a strong showing if we continue.”
Gourley said he still has projects he’s interested in seeing through.
“I’ll stay involved in all the activities that we have going and see when I can interject myself in the community,” he said. “I am going to continue to work in the community, whether it’s the School District, city or service groups, or however it goes. There’s a lot of things that need to be done in our community.”
His interest in continuing to serve in the community rests in what is probably his biggest frustration as a councilor: “not being able to fix everything I would like to have fixed, knowing some things take a lot of time to work through. That is frustrating.”
To that end, for the council continuing forward, he urges the council “to not give up, to work on projects – because it does take time.”
As a high school student, he remembers working on Ames Creek restoration projects with his science teacher, he said. Efforts to restore Ames Creek continue to this day.
“Sometimes those things take a long time,” Gourley said. “We shouldn’t get frustrated.”
On the flip side, Gourley said, “I think what I enjoyed most was being able to work together with other members to come to solutions.”
Gourley is a millwright at Cascade Pacific Pulp in Halsey, where he has worked since 1988.
He will be succeeded on the council by his wife Lisa Gourley, who won election in November. She will officially begin her term on Jan. 1.
Gourley is a fifth-generation Sweet Home native. Lisa Gourley is sixth-generation, descended from Moses Splawn, who was the first to settle Crawfordsville. They have four adult children – James, Cindy, Laura and Kim – and several grandchildren.
He and his wife are different people with different styles, Jim Gourley said.
“Lisa’s very intelligent. She can do a very good job, and she can bring very different ideas into the council.
“We may have the same goals in mind,” Gourley said. “But she gets there in different ways.”