Congratulations to Lake Oswego’s Four New City Councilors!
Congratulations to Suzanne Miles, Bryan Guiney, Heather Ramsey and Patrick Walsh, elected November 3 to serve on the Lake Oswego City Council!
Way to go LO for electing four dedicated community members to help lead our city.
Getting to know our new Councilors
We’ve spent considerable time getting to know each of the six candidates individually during neighborhood walkabouts and listening to them at two candidate forums.
Here are a few words that capture our impressions of the four elected candidates:
Suzanne Miles: Big-picture thinker. Smart questioner. Collaborative.
Bryan Guiney: Practical problem-solver. Action-oriented. Approachable.
Heather Ramsey: Collaborator. Connector. Community builder.
Patrick Walsh: Direct—in a great way. Level-headed. Articulate. Caring.
We look forward to seeing how each will contribute to the Council and how they will work together on behalf of Lake Oswego residents.
What happens next?
In January, the four new Councilors will join Mayor Joe Buck and Councilors Rachel Verdick and Massene Mboup, who have two years remaining in their terms.
Patrick Walsh, who received the fourth-highest vote total among the candidates, will serve a two-year term filling the vacant position. Suzanne Miles, Bryan Guiney and Heather Ramsey will serve four-year terms.
A big thank-you to their families, too, for supporting them throughout the campaign and as they take on this responsibility. I was invited to Bryan’s and Heather’s election-night watch parties and enjoyed getting to know their spouses. Public service often asks a lot of family members as well as the people who hold office.
Thank you to all six candidates for respectfully and collaboratively campaigning
We want to recognize and thank the two candidates who were not elected but have much to offer Lake Oswego.
Peren Tiemann: A young leader with a commitment to others
A huge thank-you to Peren Tiemann, a 22-year-old Lakeridge High School graduate now attending Lewis & Clark Law School, who gave her all to her City Council campaign. She also leads the Lake Oswego Diversity Advisory Committee. We found Peren to be an engaged listener, caring and compassionate, and an articulate advocate for others. We hope she continues contributing her energy, perspective and commitment to our community.
Neil Tunmore: Experience Lake Oswego should continue to draw upon
We also hope the Council and City staff will find ways to tap into Neil Tunmore’s extensive experience in construction and building wastewater treatment plants. Like many Lake Oswego residents, Neil has lived here for years, has family in the community and wants to give back.
What we hope our new City Council will prioritize
1. Stay grounded in what matters most to residents
If our Old Town neighborhood is representative of the wider community, many residents care deeply about the basics:
Adequate police and fire funding to support timely emergency response and an appropriate public safety presence.
Safe, well-maintained streets and sidewalks.
Practical traffic and parking management.
Emergency preparedness.
Responsible budgeting that controls spending and helps manage the tax burden on residents.
Banning noisy gas powered leaf blowers.
These are everyday quality-of-life issues. They may not always attract headlines, but they matter enormously to the people who live here.
We hope the Council will keep asking: What are residents experiencing? What needs attention? What can we do now, and what requires longer-term planning?
2. Proactively engage neighborhood associations
Neighborhood associations are an important connection between residents and City government. We hear from neighbors, identify emerging concerns, share information and help the City understand what is happening on the ground. While City advisory committees focus on specific areas such as parks, libraries and planning, the neighborhood associations bring together a broader set of concerns—including public safety, emergency preparedness, traffic, parking and neighborhood character.
3. Tap into the expertise of Lake Oswego residents
Our community has residents with a wealth of experience in construction, engineering, finance, public safety, transportation, planning and many other fields. Councilors do not need to have all the answers themselves nor just rely on the staff or paid consultants. They can ask residents to share their expertise, help benchmark how other cities approach similar challenges and identify options the City might otherwise overlook.
Former Councilors and City leaders can also provide institutional history and mentoring. Former Interim City Manager Lynn Peterson would be a great mentor as well. She lives in Lake Oswego and has just been hired as the Chief of Staff to the City Administrator (that's the title Portland has for their City Manager).
4. Work collaboratively—and make room for disagreement
A successful Council needs to work together. But collaboration doesn't mean everyone must agree. We hope our new Councilors will welcome different perspectives, ask hard questions and make space for people to respectfully challenge proposals. Healthy disagreement can uncover overlooked costs, expose weaknesses in a plan and lead to better decisions. The goal isn't simply to get along. It is to understand the trade-offs, make thoughtful decisions and explain those decisions clearly to residents.
When the Council reaches a decision, we hope its members will work constructively to move forward while remaining open to new information and better ideas. And continously adjust and hone plans in a fluid, smart way.
5. Follow through
We hope our Councilors will be accessible and responsive—not become a “stone wall” when residents raise concerns, ask difficult questions, challenge a proposed decision or offer suggestions. So many times people write to the City Councilors or make public testimony and there is no follow-up.
Listening and acknowledging a concern is a start, but residents also deserve to know what happens next. If an issue cannot be addressed, explain why. If more time or information is needed, communicate that. If action is planned, follow up and report on progress.
Being responsive doesn't mean agreeing to every request or promising that every problem can be solved. It means treating residents with respect, being transparent about constraints and commitments, and explaining next steps and tradeoffs.
Focus on continuous improvement
Lake Oswego has much to be proud of, but we should never assume that being a desirable place to live means we are already doing everything as well as we could. Prioritize benchmarking against other communities. What are other cities doing better? What can we learn from them? Where can we improve our services, processes and use of taxpayer dollars?
Please stop the political speak
Residents deserve plain English, not political talking points, and only "happy, good news" vs. the reality of the situation and tradeoffs. We want Councilors to answer questions directly, explain their reasoning and be clear about the trade-offs involved in decisions. We want to hear, "We'll work with you to get this fixed" and then to do that.
Connect the dots. Integrate the department silos.
Something we often experience as residents: the City operates in silos. Many times problems residents experience don't fit neatly into one department. They involve the police, fire, traffic, Parks/rec, legal, public works and there is no one to "integrate the silos".
When we met with Suzanne, we used an analogy: Instead of looking at the whole person, imagine having the "purse people," "pants people," "shirt people," and "shoe people" each report separately. Suzanne immediately understood the point and turned it into an example of how she would approach the Council's role: "I wouldn't want to hear from the 'purse people, pants people, shirt people, shoe people.' I'd want them to work with us on the City Council to figure out the best solutions in a more holistic and integrated way."
Some ideas from City Councilors during our discussions with them:
From our meeting with Suzanne:
"It's always important to listen to the emotion and passion because within that is the heart of a real problem to a person that they really care about. Listening to emotion is important; so is getting the data for what the problem is to be solved."
"Progress gets made by bringing groups together for iterative conversations." And "Reassessing the metrics to get them right...in a holistic way."
Taking a holistic view of the City's agenda: "The City Council needs a holistic agenda that addresses problems that are stacked up and also problems that pop up."
Challenging the assumption that existing laws and policies should simply be accepted because they already exist: "We have a law. It's written down. That doesn't mean it's right or doesn't need to be changed."
From our meeting with Bryan
What impressed us was his approach to problem-solving.
He listens intently. He asks good questions. He takes notes.
Then he shares possible solutions and ideas for how to collaboratively fix problems in practical, efficient ways.
He benchmarks what other cities are doing and he follows up. Fast.
He knows about how the government works at the state and federal level. And how LO can benefit from budgets beyond our own.
Housing planning is his professional area of expertise and we will want to harness that for the State mandated "production housing" requirements to ensure we maintain the LO neighborhood characterists and that adequate off street parking is required for new developments. That's a huge priority for our neighbors.
From our meeting with Heather
What we noticed most was how she listens. She asks thoughtful questions. She doesn’t pretend to have all the answers—and she’s willing to keep learning.
Heather knows how to bring people together, build relationships and move toward practical solutions. That kind of collaborative leadership is valuable to Lake Oswego.
She listens to the others, compliments their ideas and expertise when she's speaking, points everyone towards what the next steps are and does this in a calm, kind way.
She clearly loves LO, our local businesses, schools and people. She can help us all support the LO businesses.
She may be "the human glue" to help the City Council collaborate well together.
From our meeting with Patrick:
Patrick brings a combination of community involvement, arts leadership and a willingness to learn.
He's a reader: an important trait for a City Councilor as they have lots of "packets" to read before every meeting plus doing their own research.
He's all in to learn.
He's organized and prepared, accessible and wonderfully direct (no "political speak" - he just says what he thinks which is refreshing).
He's incredibly easy to talk with, articulate and well informed when speaking in public, and collaborative.
And he's willing to hear people out with different opinions about our library and find common ground.
Our hope is for a City Council that leads by listening, asking good questions, using community expertise, benchmarking, managing public resources responsibly and turning thoughtful discussion into action for what matters most to residents.
We look forward to working with our new and returning Councilors to make Lake Oswego an even better place to live.
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