By PAUL SCOTT/for The Herald — This being the first City Council ‘work session’ I’ve attended, I was expecting some
rather dry discussion with a city council directed session. Boy was I wrong. Instead, the audience, City council and City staff, participated in a highly democratic process of decision-making.
The issue was revising the current city codes on where mobile food units could be located and what conditions had to be met to conform to city codes. Pretty dry right? But City Planner Rick Zylstra had a better idea. Zylstra knew that the topic would be very important to business entrepreneurs as well as area residents concerned with their quality of their life and how that might be affected.
What did Rick do? He actively created a new process that provided maximum public opinion from the audience to assure all sides of the issue would be given time to make their case. He did not restrict the process to parliamentary procedure; he found a creative way to get full input from the audience.
Without going into great detail, Zylstra had prepared displays, which represented a sample on current coding that he copied from Albany city codes. He posted these codes on large sheets of paper posted along the walls. Rick explained that his goal was not to make a decision on code that evening, but to start a repeating process of redefining Oakridge codes/ordinances that would be positive for the citizens of Oakridge as well as attracting new food related businesses to operate in the city.
The most democratic part of the process was simply allowing unlimited time for members of the audience to look through those codes AND discuss the issues among themselves and city staff, without a time restriction. There were people in the room that were there to present the case for food-related/business-friendly codes that would encourage business investors to come to Oakridge. A goal that’s hard to disagree with. There were citizens that that share the same space within business zones that also expressed their concerns about quality of life issues for them; also a citizen’s right to free speech.
Rick Zylstra, along with the City Council and the CA’s leadership, displayed deep respect for Oakridge residents by openly soliciting their opinion. They did not wait for anger and conflict to corrupt the decision making process. This is at the core of our nation’s democracy. I’m proud to say that simply being a citizen of Oakridge gives you EQUAL rights to express your opinions. Also, being able to do so without fear of persecution, with those in powerful public and private positions.
Good job Oakridge leadership, and to our citizens that ‘show up’ in a process that begs for their input.
He attended William Penn College, receiving a BA: Psychology/Counseling, Sociology, MIS. He now lives in Oakridge with his wife, Marty. Paul and Marty have three adult children.
George Custer lives in Oakridge with his wife Sayre. George is a former smokejumper from his hometown of Cave Junction, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. and ran a construction company in Southern California. George assumed the volunteer duties as the Editor of the Highway 58 Herald in 2022. He loves riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, building all things wood, and playing drums on the weekends in his office.
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