What I’ve learned on your doorsteps

I’ve spent the last few months walking all around Rivergrove and knocking on doors, and it’s been the best part of this whole thing. Very few of y’all are actually able to make the live Council meetings throughout the year, and that’s obviously totally okay. I have two little kids, a full-time job, and a ton of volunteering commitments: I get it! We’re all busy, and priority lists are crowded. But you should have access to your representatives whether or not you happen to be free at 7pm on a Monday, and I’ve worked hard to make sure you do.

Knocking on the doors of strangers is thoroughly outside my comfort zone, and I’m so grateful for everyone who has made it so easy and enjoyable. People have been kind. You’ve been engaged, curious and open-minded.

So many of us want the very same basics: to feel like our city is well run, to know what’s going on, and to feel like our neighbors are just that: neighbors. People we can be friendly with, people who will look out for each other, and people we can trust to be good stewards of our shared resources.

And what neighbors we have! In one afternoon I talked with a welder, an accountant, and a teacher with decades in the classroom. One neighbor showed me all around her garden, another invited me out back to enjoy their amazing river view, and I’m building a list of the numerous people who want to learn more about beekeeping (an unexpected shared neighborhood interest!).

I’ve met people who have lived here forty years and people who moved in last spring. And one thing I keep hearing is some version of: “I didn’t know [that nifty thing] about the person two doors down!”

People want more chances to actually meet and get to know each other. That’s why David and Joan, the candidates I’m running alongside, and I, along with the amazing neighbors who support us, have been putting our energy into meet-and-greets rather than mailers. If you haven’t been to one yet, you should come on out! Text me at 971.396.8320 or email rivergrove@leahsilber.com and I’ll send you the details for the next one. And feel free to invite the person two doors down.

What people are asking for

The priorities I hear about most often are refreshingly concrete:

• Sidewalks and safer ways to get around.

  Parents, dog walkers, people who’d like to get to the parks without walking in the road. This should be a real, planned investment, not a someday.
• Better play structures and parks.

  A lot of us have young kids, a lot of us have young grandkids, and all of us benefit when the parks are places people actually want to bring them. We can have amazing shared spaces if we work on investing in them year over year, decade over decade.
• Keeping the city’s costs down.

  We are a city of ~550 people, and every dollar matters. That means following budget law even when it’s inconvenient, listening to what voters told us when they turned down the levy, and building real relationships with other agencies so we can go after outside funding instead of reaching for residents’ wallets.

These are all things we can absolutely focus on and make progress on. Yes, we’re a small city with modest funding and influence, but that just means we have to work harder. We can punch above our weight: we can build partnerships, go after outside funding, and keep these issues on our agendas, as well as on the agendas of the external agencies who can help us. With focus and competence, small cities like ours can do big things.

A note on yard signs

As signs go up over the next few weeks, pay attention to where they are. During the levy vote, a lot of the signs around town were deliberately misleading and fear-mongering. Which councilors had pro-levy signs in their own yards, and which didn’t, will tell you a lot about the real motivations and governing philosophies of the people who want to lead this city.

And since I don’t have much street frontage for signage, I’ll remind you where I stood: I believed the levy was ill-motivated and unjustified from the start, and I spoke out against it every step along the way. Another THANK YOU to the nearly two-thirds of voters who agreed with me and voted it down. I will continue to be a voice for fiscal responsibility, transparency, and accountability on Council.

On the negative stuff

You may have seen that some of the other candidates have gone hard negative, and a lot of it is about me. Some of it is a list of the times I voted no. I’m glad it’s out there. I’ve been the one vote on this Council that doesn’t just go along automatically, and every one of those no votes had a reason, often made explicit at the time: due diligence that didn’t happen, a budget-law problem, a public-process problem, or a decision that put the city’s financial stability at risk. Walking neighbors through all the reasons I voted on things has been the start of some of the best conversations I’ve had this fall.

There are votes I stand behind, and a few I don’t. The ones I don’t are from my earliest tenure on the Council: before I discovered just how much I was being misled by the Mayor’s majority, and before I’d spent enough time out there meeting the people of Rivergrove.

Meeting people face-to-face was the only way to realize that my neighbors were hardly the monsters the majority made them out to be. Maybe if my opponents had taken the time to meet constituents and even to meet me, they’d be running a different campaign. I’ve offered to sit down with Curt numerous times, and I made Brett the same offer when we spoke in person. I have yet to hear back from either of them. I’d still welcome the chance to sit down and talk through our differences.

I can’t possibly respond to all their misleading and false claims point by point here, mostly because it would take all campaign season to do so. That’s the whole point: they throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and hope some of it sticks. And they have all the time in the world to do it, too, because the one thing they’re not doing is helping our city.

Still doing the job

Here’s what I believe: a city our size does best for its residents by showing up where the bigger decisions get made. Metro, the County, the League of Oregon Cities and the state all make choices that shape our roads, our parks and our budget, and they have funding, programs and expertise built for small cities like ours. Staying small and independent doesn’t mean staying on the sidelines. Being in those rooms is how Rivergrove punches above its weight.

So while I’m out trying to get the job again with your votes, I’m still doing it. In the last month alone I’ve represented Rivergrove at Metro, County Clerk and League of Oregon Cities events. Just yesterday, I sat at a table with a representative from ODOT, an accessibility advocate from the Willamette Valley, and a city manager from another small city out near Gresham, talking through the plans and vision for the Metro area for the next 50 years.

The entire City Council is invited to these events. I go to every open League of Oregon Cities meeting within an hour’s drive of Rivergrove, Metro’s regional mixers, every meeting of the committees I serve on, and plenty of open meetings of committees I’m not on. On top of that, there’s a steady stream of Metro, LOC, and other agency events and summits.

And it’s worth it! When I walk in, our County Commissioners, Metro Councilors, and LOC reps and lobbyists know I’m Leah from Rivergrove, and they come well prepared to talk about the specific issues that affect us. They flag anything that might help our city, and introduce me to critical allies and resources around the state. They help get us in the rooms where the decisions are made, and they pick up the phone when I call.

In two years on Council, I have never once run into anyone else from Rivergrove at an external event, and most of the people I’ve talked to there haven’t either: for many of the folks who control important parts of our future, I’m the only voice from our city they’ve ever heard. I will continue to show up for Rivergrove, and to do the work of representing you, even and especially when my opponents don’t.

Let’s talk

If you have questions about anything you’ve read, or something about me doesn’t sit right, please reach out. I know it can feel awkward. Do it anyway. Call or text me at 971.396.8320, or email rivergrove@leahsilber.com.

I’d be happy to walk you through the record, show you the paperwork and videos, and share any of my correspondence with outside agencies about the numerous missteps our city has made during this administration. You’ll be able to decide for yourself what got left out, and which side of things each candidate is on. I’d much rather have that conversation on your porch than in a blog post, and I’m confident it’ll be a productive one. Who knows? You may even like me!

See you at the door.

—Leah