By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
A former three-term council member, a Planning Commissioner member and a newcomer to Yachats have applied for the vacancy on the City Council.
Greg Scott, Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey and Ariana Carlson are seeking appointment to fill the position vacated last month by James Kerti. Kerti took office in January 2019 and resigned in frustration with council direction and some of its decisions. He had three years remaining on his term.
After some discussion Wednesday on how to proceed, the council scheduled interviews with O’Shaughnessey for 9 a.m. Monday and Carlson for 10 a.m. Monday.
Scott is traveling in India and in his application said he would not be available for an interview until March 8. The council decided to try to email its seven questions to him and ask him to respond in writing.
“Greg is the one candidate that all of us know in context of his time on the council …. so it may not be as critical for him to be here,” said Mayor John Moore.
The four remaining council members, who have struggled with some divisiveness and their roles in the transition to a city manager form of government, may also struggle to come together to pick an appointee who will need a majority of three votes.
Moore said he would like to get the interviews done before the council’s March 5 meeting, when he would like the council to vote on the appointment. The council’s March 18 meeting is a joint session with Lincoln County commissioners.
Scott served 11½ years on the council before resigning in July 2018 over disagreements with other council members and City Manager Shannon Beaucaire, especially as the city moved away from an former website and information system he had spent years developing, working on and donating money to support.
O’Shaughnessey has been on the Planning Commission for two years and has stated in those meetings and testified to the council about the lack of a comprehensive plan for code enforcement.
Carlson, who has lived in Yachats for a year, began attending council meetings late last year during the council’s re-vamping of rules governing vacation rentals.
Greg Scott
Scott has lived in Yachats for 17 years and was on the Planning Commission for two years before being elected to the council and re-elected twice before resigning in July 2018. He worked in the finance office of the city of Corvallis for 12 years, including one year as acting finance director. He was a department head in the College of Business at Oregon State University for 16 years.
In his application Scott said the biggest issues facing Yachats are securing an adequate water supply, managing growth in the city and how the city finances services and infrastructure. Scott said he was motivated to re-engage in city issues because “recent council decisions suggest there is a lack of a historical perspective at the table” and that he is concerned the city, in transferring to new financial software, “about a lack of financial information available to the council, commissions and the public.”
In his application Scott attached the names of 40 Yachats residents who supported his appointment.
Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessey
O’Shaughnessey has lived in Yachats for three years, but in her application said she had visited for 18. She worked 35 years at the University of Illinois, including as an executive associate dean, associate director of human resources and assistant dean of students.
In her application, O’Shaughnessey said the biggest issues for Yachats were water supply and security, strategic development in residential zones, funding infrastructure, parking, and low-income housing. She said her motivation to seek the council appointment was based on giving back to the community and that her “skills and experience working with city governments in Urbana (Ill.) and Yachats fit well with the policy-making role of the council.”
Ariana Carlson
Carlson has lived in Yachats for a year, but said in her application that she grew up in Corvallis and had vacationed in Yachats for 30 years. Carlson founded a coaching and motivation workshop company called The PNW Collective in 2018, started a Corvallis-based women’s magazine in 2013 and started a Corvallis weekly independent newspaper in 2011.
Carlson said has no prior government involvement but was on the board of the Lane County Farmers Market for several years.
In her application, Carlson also said main issues facing the city are water management and parking during the tourist season and during off-season events downtown. She said her motivation for applying for the council was to “contribute to the community that has always felt like home to me, and I’m fascinated by the policies and procedures of small government.”
