Council members ending careers – Bill Wittress, North Bend
Published 10:38 am Thursday, October 2, 2008
After more than four years on the North Bend City Council, it’s now time for Bill Wittress to spend some time with his family.
Last Wednesday, Dec. 7, Wittress attended his last meeting as a member of the council.
“It’s pretty likely your council meetings will be a lot shorter when I’m gone,” said Wittress, who noted he has a reputation for being long-winded.
He had just returned from a vacation in Hawaii, where had had the chance to spend a lot of time with his son, who will be 5 in January. Wittress said he has been on the council for most of his son’s life, and he’d now like to spend more time with his wife and son.
Looking back at his time on the council, Wittress said he is proud of what he has accomplished.
“Did I leave the city better than I found it? I think so,” he said.
Wittress became interested in city politics when he met Jack Webber at a party shortly after moving to North Bend. Webber told him there was a possible development planned for Tollgate Farm, and Wittress became involved in the effort to keep that development from happening.
“I went door to door talking to citizens and had the opportunity to get a taste of democracy and what you can do,” he said. “We managed to save a legacy for this town.”
Wittress joined the council shortly after becoming involved in saving Tollgate from development.
He said one of the things he is most proud of during his term is that the city was able to keep a sex-offender halfway house from coming to a site just outside the city limits.
“I’m proud that we’re able to look back on that,” he said. “We fought against pretty damning odds.”
He’s also pleased that the city restarted its human services program during his term in office. He said there was a lot of opposition and skepticism, but that human services are important and the city has managed to increase funding to the program, even through hard times financially.
There are disappointments, however. Wittress said one thing he is frustrated about is the water rights issue.
“It’s disappointing sitting here four years later and we still don’t have water rights,” he said, although he added that he has “learned more about water than I ever thought I would know.”
He also said he hopes to plant a seed to keep the council talking about and taking action on building a new fire station. It’s something that has been discussed in the past and he said the council has restarted the efforts.
“I implore my folks on the council to keep that up,” he said.
His advice to Jonathan Rosen, who will fill the vacant council seat, and the other council members, is to be civil to one another regardless of their personal differences.
Wittress said former mayor Joan Simpson’s lesson to him was: “It doesn’t matter if you like each other, you have to work together on the council for the benefit of the community.”
To the council on Wednesday, he gave his own piece of advice, similar to Simpson’s to him: “It’s critical that you set aside any differences you have and remember who you’re working for: the citizens,” he said.
If an opportunity came for Wittress to again serve on a city council, he said it’s a possibility he would do it.
“There would be a lot of factors,” he said. “If I thought I was the right guy and it would be beneficial for the citizens, I probably would.”
And if he did it again, he’d have a better idea of what he was getting into. Wittress said there were a few surprises for him when he first started on the council.
“I didn’t expect the amount of reading and the time commitment,” he said.
He also said he initially thought that the council ran everything, when, in fact, he learned that it’s a much more collaborative process with the city staff and citizens.
Wittress said he expected to be able to make change much more quickly than it actually came.
“But in some cases, I was pleasantly surprised that we can turn the Titanic on a dime on occasion,” he said, citing the specific example of keeping the sex-offender site out of the area.
