James Rose:

My vision for this city is simple. I want to work to breathe new life into a city we all can be proud of – safe, prosperous, thriving, progressive and modern, but respectful of our proud small town traditions. I want a city where all people can enjoy all of the natural beauty that our community has to offer. I want a city filled with opportunities for everyone – and especially opportunities for our children so they can stay and sustain the future success of North Bend. I want a united city with neighbors ready willing and able to help neighbors – a place where nobody is left behind. I want a city that is perpetually moving forward. Finally, I want a city where communication and transparency are the essential keys to building continuous success. A place where our adaptability, agility and self-empowerment are effectively employed to solve ever increasingly complex problems and issues.
To achieve this vision, I look to build a strong coalition that will enable our city government to bring about decisive and positive changes with the primary goal of ensuring an open, diverse and more inclusive city government. My term as Mayor will be based on four key elements that I believe are essential to successfully leading this city including:

1. Restore the faith and trust in local government.
2. Strong, deliberative and decisive leadership.
3. Transparency in all facets of our government.
4. Striving every day to make people’s lives better.

Jessica Engelke:

My vision for North Bend is to look toward the future by creating business opportunities while sustaining our current businesses and helping them to thrive and grow. We need to sustainably manage the City’s budget in a way that protects the interests of our citizens while ensuring that basic needs of our community are met. I will ensure the budget is sustainable for more than a year and not simply make one-time cuts that give the illusion of balancing the budget while really just kicking the can down the road. We must ensure that businesses and our citizens are not able to just survive in North Bend, but are able to thrive!

Eric Gleason:

My vision is for a safe, healthy and thriving city built on trust between its people and its local government. By establishing trust with the people of North Bend we can grow the infrastructure to ensure the longevity of our public safety programs, revitalize access for business that will bolster tourism dollars and improve our communication with the community to facilitate conversations about how to do these things together.

Jonathan Vinyard:

My vision for the city of North Bend is to secure our locally grown young people and attract them to stay in order to grow the area with their innovative and creative ideas. To be able to achieve this vision, we need to entice our younger generation with opportunities to thrive by encouraging growth of industry and entrepreneurship in our community. I believe one way to enrich North Bend is by expanding upon our natural beauty of the waterfront and boardwalk and make it a desirable place to build businesses and recreation for our citizens. We can do this by taking another look at the City of North Bend Urban Renewal Agency’s Downtown Waterfront District Master Plan.

Pat Goll:

Number one priority for me is to help regain confidence and trust from the NB citizens that feel their voice has not been heard by the City Administrator and Council. We need to communicate and be transparent in all city business. To make sure our new North Bend City Administrator understands where we have been and where we need to go to gain that confidence and trust back.

Ron Kutch:

North Bend has a proud history of hard-working citizens that provided lumber to build the West Coast. Those days are largely gone. Decades of poverty have taken their toll. Social Services is now among the top employment sectors in the area. It is said that “Attitude is more important than Aptitude.” It seems that too often, City leadership defaults to “No” instead of “Yes. Let’s see if we can make that work.” It’s not enough to say “We can’t do that because….” We need to start saying. “Let’s Git’R Done!” then rolling up our sleeves, digging in and figuring it out.
My Vision for North Bend is to see every citizen excited to make it a thriving city once again. I would achieve that by being an example, actively looking for opportunities to say “yes” and putting in the sweat needed to see things succeed.

Susanna Noordhoff:

My vision for the City is a vibrant place with a variety of job opportunities, adequate housing for our population, thriving businesses and honesty and integrity in City government.
It takes a team effort to make anything happen in government. I would consider other folks ideas, and propose my own. I would support property development with an eye to increasing the tax base. I would support greater use of rehabilitation of downtown structures with urban renewal funds.
I would propose a City Resolution stating that if the City is retaining someone for a professional evaluation, either volunteer or paid, the person is prohibited from submitting a bid on a contract involving the evaluation. I would propose that advisory Boards keep meeting minutes; at present, reports are not made to City Council as is required by State law.

Timm Slater:

I see North Bend as: A People and Business friendly city; Blessed with a well balanced economic base of retail, manufacturing and tourism business; And celebrating our heritage but focused on our future. So how do we do that? First, we need to confirm or re-confirm what we want to be as a city. You do that through a community wide visioning process and setting goals to achieve those results. Then you track your progress with regular reviews and repeat the entire process every couple years. Secondly, we engage the next generation of young entrepreneurs in our city to ensure a transition of committed city leadership. Lastly, we get on with getting things done and celebrate the results.