The Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce strongly encourages engagement between elected officials and chamber members as a way to inform and to be informed on issues of interest and impact to the chamber community. Local non-partisan elections are a great opportunity to deepen our understanding of each other.

While the Chamber will not be making any candidate endorsements, we seek to inform our members and voters by engaging in dialogue with those interested in serving and representing our community.

We invited each candidate running for office on the 2022 primary election ballot (opposed or unopposed) to submit their response to the following questions in writing. These questions have been formed with Springfield’s diverse group of business in mind, with issues of interest and impact on our business community and our local economy of most importance. Responses we received are published below.

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Candidate Information

Full Name: Joe Berney

Position Running for: Lane County Commissioner, Springfield, District 2

Campaign Email: adam@joeberney.com

Campaign Website (if applicable): www.joeberney.com

Endorsements (if applicable):

A vast majority of Springfield City Councilors have endorsed or support me. In addition, the majority of Springfield School Board members, and Willamalane board members have personally endorsed me. Business endorsements include Advanced Energy Systems, McKenzie Glass, Mothership Salon and a host of other Springfield and county businesses. Campaign contributions have come from these endorsers and others, including The Wildish Co. Other endorsements include:
Lane Community College Education Association
Lane County Building Trades Council                                           

Lane Professional Firefighters Association

Lane County Democratic Party
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 280
Oregon Chapter – Sierra Club
United Food & Commercial Workers 555

AFSCME, Lane County Employees
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503

Senator Lee Beyer

Senator James Manning
Representative John Lively
Emilio Hernandez, Springfield School Board
Denise Bean, Willamalane Board President
Joe Tokatly, McKenzie Glass
Celeste Wong, Celeste Watch Co.
Kevin Barrett, Swallowtail Distillery
John VanLandingham, Housing Advocate

Pro-Choice Oregon PAC

…and more at: JoeBerney.com

Personal/Background

1.What should the business community know about you, your background, and your understanding of issues impacting their success?

My wife and I live in Springfield, as do 4 of our 6 children and 3 of our 4 grandchildren. Maddie taught for 30 years at Cottage Grove HS while living in Thurston. Her children went through the SPS system. Two of them attended Thurston HS during the tragic shooting in 1998.

I moved to Springfield because I fell in love with a girl, Madeleine (Maddie). Then I fell in love with Springfield. Maddie and I are heavily invested Springfield’s civic life. Maddie’s service includes working with the Springfield Education Foundation, the SMART reading program at Thurston Elementary (where one granddaughter just graduated and another is about to start), and the Springfield Library Foundation. I serve our community on the County Board of Commissioners, Springfield’s Economic Development Agency, the county workforce board, metro planning commission with Mayor Sean VanGordon and Councilor Steve Moe, LRAPA with Councilor Joe Pishioneri, and a host of others. Maddie and I moved into what was intended to be our retirement home in 2013 in the Thurston hills.  Although life took a turn and we are far from retired, it is still our sanctuary thanks to my master gardener wife.

The business community should know that I have owned and operated several highly successful businesses and have far more pragmatic and successful business experience than anyone else in the race.

This includes a broccoli processing and public cold storage facility with 74 full time employees. We processed 30-40M pounds of special cut broccoli annually, blanched it, and blast froze it. We had a saying:  “Frozen is fresher than fresh.”  That’s because we processed and froze it within four hours from being picked in the field. Ours was the only locally-owned cold storage in Watsonville, CA, the fruit and vegetable processing hub of the fertile Salinas Valley.

I have owned and operated a training firm with over $20M in contracts, primarily with frozen food processors and building trades. Other ventures include providing initial financing and mentorship for a group of young men to start what became Big City Gamin’ in Eugene at 13^th and Willamette. I sold my shares back to these young men a few years later.

I helped them start this for my son over 20 years ago. His mother was fighting cancer. He needed a positive distraction, liked video games, so I felt this would be a great way to have him learn business start-up and operational details. While we lost his mother to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, his interest in business remains. He was the second highest producing Jr. Partner in his class in the Pacific Northwest at Merrill Lynch. He was VP of Finance in my last business. He closed $140M in transactions for us in this capacity. Today, after serving Springfield as a police officer until he injured himself in the line of duty, he is a financial consultant and lives here in Springfield with his wife and daughter (one of our 4 grandchildren).

I would also like chamber members to know I mentored a troubled young man in danger of dropping out of Springfield HS for two years in the mid 90’s. I reconnected with him and his family four years ago while canvassing for the commissioner job I now hold. He told me how much I changed his life. Ray, his wife and I shed tears of joy at reconnecting in front of the home they had just purchased here in Springfield. Ray is night supervisor at Far West Steel and his wife helps run The Busy Bee restaurant. I share this touching moment to simply demonstrate my love for Springfield’s people and place is real and transcends politics.

My last business was in construction and construction finance. Our niche market was clean energy commercial and industrial retrofits. We created new markets and channels to existing ones. I can elaborate in greater detail if you’d like.

When I ran for Springfield County Commissioner four years ago I did not expect to win. When I won I did not expect to be more than a one-term guy. But the world was different then. We couldn’t have imagined the long-term impacts Covid and wildfires would bring. When these life-altering events occurred the county took on incident command for both while maintaining current service levels.

I quickly became the county’s “economic development commissioner” given my background as these things hit. It is clear to me that more than ever the county needs a steady hand with a calm, competent business perspective at the helm after the last two years. We are all sick and tired of being sick and tired, and are building back. My relationships of trust with county leadership, and being on the board of the Association of Oregon Counties has enabled a strong impact in complex inter-agency efforts.

At this time our community and the business environment does not need more amped-up partisanship or polarization. We don’t need far right or far left. We need a moderate eye toward solutions to real problems in ways that attract investment and create good jobs. I know how to do this and how to move money.

I created both the priority and pragmatic ability for the county to spend and invest public dollars in local business hiring local people. I made sure the county climate initiative is real, business-friendly, and creates net new jobs. I am responsible for pushing and insuring more county deposits into local financial institutions that make local business and home loans.

I led development of a public-private partnership structure for several key economic development and housing initiatives, and would like to see these through.

My professional background also includes developing 160 units of low-income housing, working as a tenured high school teacher, and heading up the country’s largest business-education partnership organization.

Local Business, Economic Development, Community Issues

2. What current or future issues of impact or interest to business and economic development will you champion and why? (no more than two please)

In my view Springfield and Lane County are inadequately capitalized. One role of government is to put in place policies and incentives which attract capital to address critical social and infrastructure needs, inject capital into the economy and create jobs. That means prioritizing county procurements with local business.

Another component of capitalizing our city and county is leveraging resources from outside the county, further injecting capital and its multiplier into our local economy. Almost two-thirds of the county budget now is supported by sources other than local taxes.

Fiscal discipline is critical. Since my tenure the county has achieved the highest bond rating in its history.

The county’s community benefit framework I developed prioritizes contracting to local business creating local jobs. It has already injected tens of millions into the local economy that otherwise would have left the area, enabling a local economy multiplier effect.

I have and will continue to work to bring Opportunity Zone investment dollars into Springfield and work closely with SEDA and Councilor Moe to revitalize Glenwood. I am working with three large Glenwood property owners in this regard.

I led the effort to increase the amount and ease of recycling. I have negotiated in principle parameters of a public-private partnership with local businesses to privately invest north of $30M at Short Mountain to build, maintain and operate (1) industrial sorting machines to sort (plastics from metals from glass from paper from organics etc. using AI and robotics), bundle and sell to domestic and international markets which, in turn, will manufacture Lane county waste into other consumer goods; and (2) digesters converting organic waste into clean energy and high grade compost. The plan includes private investment, job creation, safety, extending landfill life, decreasing carbon emissions and generating clean energy. If able to continue working on this, I expect we will see it operational before the end of my next and last term.

How would you define a successful outcome of one or all of those issues?

1. Greater percent of county reserve funds deposited in local banks and credit unions that provide local commercial and real estate financing;
2. Continued leveraging of county funds to attract resources and investment from outside the city and county, increasing our local economic multiplier and increasing commerce;
3. Closed transactions which finance construction of hundreds of units of working family, elderly and market rate housing, and also revenue-generating business activities in Springfield’s downtown and Glenwood areas that are designated Opportunity Zones;
4. Almost 100 new jobs attached to industrial recycling and waste-to-energy business investments at Short Mountain.

2. What do you see as the best way to engage the business community in local government?

First, by genuinely being accessible, open, honest, listening and factoring in business views.

I consistently hammer on different county activities to seriously and substantively work with the private sector to structure the use of limited public dollars to attract business investment. Examples include creating affordable housing for ownership as well as rent, the Short Mountain opportunity I am creating, the county’s health care and health clinic partnership with Trillium and Pacific Source. Opening up more land for manufacturing and more incentives to do energy retrofits on industrial activity. The list goes on.

By aggressively pursuing opportunities to partner with business and pragmatically address specific issues through business activity, more business investment will also provide sustainable revenue to operate government. Rather than shrinking the pie, we always need to be smart about how we expand it.

I listen to all groups, especially business but also labor, environmental, law enforcement and advocates for housing and behavioral and physical health. It’s genuine and authentic. This creates relationships of trust and enables greater cooperation and partnership moving forward together.

Public Policy for Investment, Spending, Taxes, and Fees

3. Where do you see opportunities to improve the quality of life, place, and commerce in Springfield and Lane County? What current or future investments can help build a thriving business community? Please offer up to three examples.

The same quality of life indicators are key to this question.

Public safety.  All residents want and need to feel safe.  I believe Springfield has made great progress in this regard in many ways, including the hiring of our new police chief, Andrew Shearer.  Fairness and compassion go hand in hand with transparency, enforcement and justice.

Infrastructure.  Water, sewers, better roads, connectivity and development needs to be brought to Glenwood and other seemingly neglected or stagnant parts of Springfield.  There are opportunities for partnerships with Lane County as we look at infrastructure investments in Springfield, especially Glenwood.

We need to do infrastructure right.  For example, I am concerned with the current city plan for Main Street.  Do we really think taking away critical commercial infrastructure for many businesses, a median divide and nine roundabouts will increase either commerce or safety?  While this is a Springfield decision and I serve as a county commissioner, I do enjoy some influence and will continue to weigh in.

Quality of schools/services. As we open our schools post-Covid, we must redevelop and re -establish strong connections to all segments of our community with volunteer programs, mentorships, internships and pathways to post-secondary training and the workforce. The more welcoming schools are, the more families will want to move here, bringing new ideas and opportunities for new business. While always striving to improve attendance and graduation rates, our schools must be committed to the uniqueness of every child, teach our children a work ethic, a service ethic, a citizenship ethic, how to work with others and how to think for themselves. The family resource centers that are now available in each school will provide a much-needed safety net and guidance for students and working families.

Springfield is home to an enviable park system, vibrant library and growing arts and culture scene. Maintaining and growing these quality-of-life institutions can only make our community more attractive.

Commerce. Much attention has been paid to the few blocks of Springfield’s downtown; its ongoing revitalization continues and is commendable. This represents only a section of the commerce that occurs in our community. There are hubs of economic activity in every part of Springfield from Thurston to Gateway to Mohawk, the hospital districts, etc.

In Thurston, for example, a building (which used to house a Safeway) has sat vacant for years now. How is Springfield economic development working to revitalize this area? Another example is the empty building off the Mohawk onramp that used to be an Izzy’s. It’s been an eyesore for years now. Revitalization and public-private partnership opportunities abound and need to be seized upon for commerce and economic development in all neighborhood business, retail and commercial hubs.

4. The State of Oregon currently has a robust regulatory framework for businesses as well as tax burden that has increased over the past 3 years. How do you account for this in future policy decisions, and what do you see as solutions for preventing the need for further regulatory and tax expansion?

First, Lane County government is not State of Oregon government.

I think government has, in many ways, become too complicated and built in too many bureaucratic structures that cost money and create obstacles to solving the very problems they are established to solve. I am not for the “nanny state.”  There should be a balance between the genuine role of government and freedoms embodied by practicing personal responsibility.

Often the public interest requires units of government to establish regulatory frameworks, other times not. Sadly, sometimes the execution of these frameworks are mismanaged and create legitimate pushback. Other times the frameworks just don’t solve the problem they were intended to.

Two examples:  The State of Oregon will soon receive several hundreds of millions from the opioid settlement. Regulations for the public good were violated, regulations that protect public health. But the state is distributing these in a way that exemplifies the worst of state government. Instead of 100% of settlement proceeds going to direct providers of treatment services, 45% will go to the state. Mind you, the state offers no treatment services. Only local units of government do. Nonetheless, the state will seize 45% of these dollars to establish monitoring and regulatory oversight.

What will the state do with its share of the money? Hire lawyers and staff to provide regulatory oversight. Nonsense! It should all go to direct service at the local level.

This demonstrates the good, the bad, and the ugly, of the question asked.

Another example:  My clean energy commercial and industrial retrofit construction company’s main markets were in California. The California legislature was developing legislation to set annual goals for decreases in carbon emissions from buildings and prescribing how building owners must achieve them.  My company intervened, representing building owners across that state. We successfully blocked the legislation whose intent was good but was doomed for fights and failure. We replaced it by having industry work with government to set carbon emission targets, and let businesses decide how they would achieve those targets. As a result the California Business Properties Association gave their Champions of Industry Award to my company, their first-ever Energy category.

Rules should be consistent rather than arbitrary, and consult business first as they impact the business community.

5. Anything else you’d like to add?

Yes. It has been a humbling experience to serve Springfield after a successful career and blessed life. This statement is not made lightly.

I am fundamentally thankful for the precious gift of life. At the age of 21 I was given a prognosis of no chance to live past the age of 30 given the conditions of my insulin-dependent diabetes at the time. That was my reality, and why I refused to marry or have children until I passed the 30-year mark. Then, after marriage and children, what happened?  My young, healthy first wife left us at the age of 43, succumbing to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Yesterday Maddie learned of the passing of a young lady, a former student teacher and colleague of hers, who was just 45. Sadly, she’s leaving behind a family that includes three young children. Truly, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

So, to have been given the opportunity from members of my community to be of service at this point in my life has been yet another blessing heaped upon me. For this I am thankful, and for this I would be honored to have the opportunity to continue that service.

Thank you.

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Candidate Information
Full Name: David Loveall
Position Running for: Lane County Commissioner Springfield District 2
Campaign Email: david@loveallforspringfield.com
Campaign Website (if applicable): www.loveallforspringfield.com
Endorsements (if applicable): Former Mayor Christine Lundberg, Former Lane County
Commissioner Steve Cornacchia, Springfield Board of Realtors, Lane County Peace Officers
Association, Oregon Veterans Association, Lane County Association Local 626. Timberunity PAC

Personal/Background

1. What should the business community know about you, your background, and your
understanding of issues impacting their success?

I’m a creative problem solver entrepreneur businessman. My career has brought me into
the fields of hundreds of trades, businesses and factories to gain a broad understanding of
many different ways of doing commerce. As a downtown developer of Springfield, my
partners and I have assembled a team of like-minded people who believe “dynamism” is
the key to community economic development. I’ve fought hard for the businesses under my
association to thrive and survive, even when the government wants to put overbearing
restrictions on them. I will always fight for small business and all those who employ our
citizens in Springfield.

Local Business, Economic Development, Community Issues

2. What current or future issues of impact or interest to business and economic development
will you champion and why? (no more than two please)
(i.e. Housing, Infrastructure Improvements, Main Street Safety Project, Climate Action, Taxes,
Workforce and Education, Land Use, Indoor Track, Sports, and Event Facility)

I would put the Glenwood revitalization and Indoor Track projects near the top of my list. This
area, for my entire life has been a “diamond in the rough by the river”. It’s underutilized as a
main star attraction to our town for commerce, world events and tourism, but also a real tax
revenue source that would benefit the entire county.

Housing, workforce and training to me are are all linked. I’ve spoken to several private firms
who want to actively partner with the county and city on the issues of training trades and
from those trained, make a creatively thought out impact into housing and sheltering the
vulnerable. I have skin in this game as my adopted son suffers from homelessness and mental
issues.

How would you define a successful outcome of one or all of those issues?

The day of groundbreaking a master plan in Glenwood would be a celebration and when we
get a significant dent in our need for street level help shelter beds, (say around 500) would be
greater still.

3. What do you see as the best way to engage the business community in local government?

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe personal, one-on-one relationships are the best in clearly
understanding the unique challenges, costs and red tape each business startup or growing
company face. Government tends to apply a “one fit for all” that simply doesn’t work. We
must also make available, even during an emergency period of time, an effective and honest
way the constituents of our particular district can have their input freely spoken and
considered in all the county decisions. Even if we have to hold a town hall out of the back of a
pickup truck in a parking lot on Main Street, we must keep the public leadership process, in
front of elected government.

Public Policy for Investment, Spending, Taxes, and Fees

4. Where do you see opportunities to improve the quality of life, place, and commerce in
Springfield and Lane County? What current or future investments can help build a thriving
business community? Please offer up to three examples.

1) We must Invest ourselves back into the Timber business for the budget revenue.
2) Reduce start up costs and fees for small business, and make Lane County “more
business friendly”.
3) Make trade electives in schools broader to include On-the-Job-Training with local
business partnerships and make incentives for those businesses easy and cost
beneficial to those who participate.

I believe bustling commerce allows and leads us naturally to better quality of life. Having the
resources and creative energy and synergy leads us to take care and expand what we have
which makes our lives great, like parks, wilderness and family activities. This must come from
the proper stewardship of what’s here in our blessed area both economic and environmental.
Our vast timber resources that we’ve responsibly and environmentally cultivated in the past
used to bring tremendous benefit to the county but has systematically been whittled away
and voted out of our budget. This direction connection has brought about a plummeting
degree of public safety and lack of maintenance resources. Defaulting to more (and in my
opinion) excessive taxation becomes the “go to” in the way to support those basic needs
timber money used to provide. These decisions have over-burdened the entrepreneurial spirit
of county, striping the momentum of “dynamism” which limits growth, prosperity and
innovation. Small business is our key to the county’s survival. We must remove the many
barriers and layers of red tape that hinder business startups, like reduce permitting and
System Development Fees that kill so many good ideas. The County must become a financial
partner in business.

4. The State of Oregon currently has a robust regulatory framework for businesses as well as
tax burden that has increased over the past 3 years. How do you account for this in future
policy decisions, and what do you see as solutions for preventing the need for further
regulatory and tax expansion?

As an active developer/businessman I’ve directly encountered many of these policies of
failure. Continue to see the cascading and connected affect revenue left in the forest does is
unacceptable, as it affects not only our ability to budget basic needs, but also strips our
desires of making life better. It contains us being able to make a dent in the affordable
housing issue, higher the appropriate amount of law enforcement officers and fund a jail to
keep dangerous people off our streets. It also dries up resources to provide much needed
street-level wellness and road and infrastructure improvements.
As County Commissioner, I would vote against increases in taxation that affect all sizes of
businesses, and would seek to clear the backlog of permitting time lag and seek to make the
process more streamline. Our complex climate solutions and so many other issues are to be
found in the entrepreneurial process and, as County Commissioner, I would find every way
possible to open up the now stagnant and weary process for this energy to flow again. I
would vote to continue the choices of power in our county but would continue to look at
ways to improve the entire energy issue.

Government is not the solution to our problems, nor is more taxation, people are. When
people realize again, ‘skin in the game’ is what will change the game, we will.

General

5. Anything else you’d like to add?

A good friend once told me that if a man has to say he’s honest, or say he can get the job
done, but hasn’t proven it by his work, be suspect. If you want to know who I am, look at
the works I’ve done as a private citizen. Look intently at the results, the team we’ve
worked with, the issues we’ve overcome and what’s been built. Downtown Springfield
now boasts the county’s best restaurants, a revitalized array of mid level housing, nearly
100 new jobs and is a place where World and Olympic events are held…then you’ll see a
glimpse of man and his wife who risked their life savings to help make a community
thrive. This same man want’s to do that for the county as well.