The council seat that will represent most of downtown and central Salem is up for grabs in the May primary election. 

Epidemiologist and political newcomer Celine Coleman and Paul Tigan, a communications strategist who has had leadership roles on the city’s budget committee and Grant Neighborhood Association, are vying for the role.

Ward 1 covers part of west Salem, most of downtown Salem and extends east to the Oregon State Fairgrounds.

The race is nonpartisan, and the position is an unpaid volunteer job. Councilors serve a four-year term.

The seat is currently held by City Council President Virginia Stapleton, who was elected to city council in May 2020. Her term ends on December 31. Stapleton withdrew from the race to run for the House District 21 seat, and endorsed Tigan.

Meet the candidates and hear their perspectives on key Salem issues, including the city’s budget shortfall, homelessness and public safety, below.

Background

Coleman

Coleman moved to Salem from Phoenix about two years ago, and is an epidemiologist in Marion County’s health department. Her volunteer work includes the NAACP, Marion County Fair and regional festivals, and she currently serves on a homeowner’s association board in Phoenix. 

She started working for Marion County earlier this year, and before that worked for Linn County while living in Ward 1. Her work involves data analysis, community outreach, and building connections between providers and patients.

Coleman said she wants to see progress on the city’s lack of wraparound services for addiction and mental health by improving relationships with the county and community organizations. She also wants to address homelessness and reduce community violence.

“I see a lot of the issues that people face on a daily basis,” Coleman said, including talking with people going through challenges with mental health and drug addiction. “Some people, they just need someone in their corner.”

Coleman said she’s the best fit to represent Ward 1 because she brings perspectives from living in different areas of the country, and she can commit time to the job.

“I’m not part of any of the committees so I don’t have this whole rose colored lens: ‘This is how it’s always done.’ I’m not saying to change everything either, but I’m willing to learn about the process and see areas of improvement in areas where there’s a lot of strain,” she said.

Tigan

Tigan moved to Salem in 2015, working as a land manager for the Bureau of Land Management. His children were one and four years old when his family moved here, and he said they consider Salem their hometown. He is now a vice president at Metropolitan Group, a strategic communications firm in Portland and works remotely.

Tigan received the “At Your Service” award from the City of Salem in 2022 for his budget committee engagement, organization and navigating to virtual systems during pandemic. He also coaches recreational soccer and volunteers at Grant Community School in Salem.

Tigan helped lead the “Save Salem Campaign” to promote a city payroll tax ahead of the November special election, along with Stapleton. The payroll tax, which would have applied a 0.814% tax on wages earned in the city above minimum wage to fund city services, overwhelmingly failed at the ballot box. He called the experience humbling, but said the effort helped inform the community.

“There’s a lot of conversations that have taken place since the failure of the payroll tax that weren’t going to happen otherwise,” he said. “Now we’re at the place where the cuts that we were trying to avoid are inevitable and have to be made in order to follow the law.”

Tigan said that his kids have motivated him to make Salem better for the next generation. 

“I just really feel like the city’s at a place of tremendous potential. There’s so much good going on in Salem, especially within Ward 1,” he said. “But at the same time… the city’s in a very precarious position because of its budget. And I just really feel compelled to help in any way I can.”

He said the biggest issue the city faces is the sustainability of the budget, and the impact it will have on the city’s homeless services programs. He said other top issues are transportation, safety and climate sustainability.

Tigan said he’s the best fit to represent the ward because of his experience, the amount of time he’s dedicated to understanding the city’s situation and his family’s use of the downtown streets, parks and schools.

“My vision for the full, four-year term: we’ve got Salem on sustainable footing for its future. And first and foremost that means working with the other councilors and the voters and residents of Salem to identify a sustainable funding program for our city,” he said. “I really hope by the end of my term, we’re back on our feet.”

The issues

Salem’s budget

Coleman

To address the city’s budget issues, Coleman said she would like to start with a needs assessment of what spending would benefit residents, and to improve the city’s communication about budget topics.

“Numbers can only tell you so much, but you need a qualitative element,” she said.

She said she feels like the city has an adequate amount of revenue, and thinks some expenses and funds could be reevaluated. She supports the budget committee’s recent decision to use money from the city’s hotel tax to prevent library cuts for another year, and thinks there are other buckets outside the general fund to be considered.

Coleman said she wants to keep the city library open, and sees it as an essential place for education and resources, especially for low-income families. She said that supporting community gatherings, like the Riverfront Park concerts proposed to be cut, are essential to the community’s health.

She said a contracted promoter could bring in performers and increase lodging income over time, and she also said she’d like to encourage large companies, like Boeing, to move to Salem when they reduce operations elsewhere.

“I’m not for placing new taxes for people at this time,” she said, but would consider it if the community was engaged properly. She said she would support a levy if it came to it, but thinks the option takes too much time.

On the payroll tax, she said she wanted to see more input from the community, especially state workers.

She said when it came to deciding which departments to prioritize, she would want to take a closer look at spending first, especially in the use of incentives and overtime spending.

Tigan

Tigan said he wants to work to secure an annual payment from the state of Oregon, which doesn’t pay property taxes to Salem on buildings it owns. He said that’s needed to make the city’s deficit shallower before seeking other revenue options like new taxes.

Salem legislators have tried multiple times to pass a law for an annual payment without success. Rep. Tom Andersen, who led the most recent effort in 2024, said he’ll try again during the 2025 session.

“I want to work with our delegation in the legislature for that,” Tigan said, and he would also pursue available state funding to keep Salem’s homeless services open. 

Tigan said he will look to the solutions that come from the city’s revenue task force, which will meet through June to explore new ways to bring money into the city. He said whatever options they come up with should go to voters.

“If we’re going to maintain the kind of city that I think we want to pass onto our children, we’re going to have to continue to come up with sustainable revenue solutions,” he said. 

He said he appreciates City Manager Keith Stahley’s leadership on budget cuts, but doesn’t think pitting the library against the fire department is the right approach.

“We really should try to maintain as much of the service as we can across as many departments as we can,” he said.

He said that after the city closed public pools during the 2008 budget crisis, they never reopened. He doesn’t want to see that happen to services like the West Salem Library.

“I don’t want to get to a place where we’re closing facilities, and then eventually turning our back on them,” he said. “I really feel like we need to keep these institutions alive as long as we can while we search out revenue solutions.”

Homelessness and housing

Coleman

Coleman said she wants to build a better relationship with counties to support Salem’s homeless residents.

“The lack of wraparound services, I don’t think we have enough of those. I know we have rehabilitation, methadone clinics blocks from here, but I think we could work a lot better with the county so that people are able to access more of those services,” she said. 

She said that positive reinforcement with people who are struggling would go a long way.

On housing, she said she supports development efforts the city has played a role in, including subsidizing private apartments like the downtown Rivenwood building, the development of city-owned Block 50 and the recently-opened affordable housing project Sequoia Crossings. But, she said their tax exemptions impact city revenue and wants to see more options for people moving out of apartments.

“Incorporating more townhomes and single family homes is a mechanism for upward mobility as the city will receive property tax from that owner,” she said.

Tigan

Tigan said that the city has turned into the government of last resort for addressing homelessness, which was especially clear during the pandemic.

“People were lined up around Rite-Aid. Who was going to help them? It certainly wasn’t the federal government, and it certainly wasn’t the state of Oregon,” he said. He said he believes the city did the right thing by using one-time federal funding to create micro shelters and the Navigation Center.

Now that the shelters are there, he said he supports collaboration with the state and county to maintain them.

Tigan said the city also needs more initial response, and thinks the Salem Outreach and Livability Services team, which connects homeless people with services and cleans up campsites, has been a community benefit.

He supports programs that pair mental health workers with addiction recovery mentors to respond to some crisis calls instead of police, but said that funding would make it difficult to implement on a city level. 

The county launched a similar program earlier this year, but it has seen few calls due to a slow rollout and lack of awareness, organizers said. Tigan said he welcomes the county’s model and their work to help those in crisis throughout the county.

“In a perfect world, Marion County’s efforts would be complemented by Polk County and Salem would not have another program to fund and manage,” he said.

On housing, Tigan said the supply and demand curve is “out of whack,” stemming from a lack of housing development after the Great Recession. He said he wants to incentivize housing development, from studio apartments to single-family homes, and joined the planning commission to learn more about the process.

Public safety

Coleman 

Coleman has attended the Salem Police Department’s public Community Gun Violence Reduction Initiative meetings, and said she liked the language accessibility for Spanish speakers. She thinks city leaders could do a better job of reaching people who live in the affected communities.

“I think it’s a little too late to be talking about violence because it’s been going on, but better late than never,” she said.

On solutions, she said there’s insight to be gained from people who have experience in gangs and have served time in prison. In Phoenix, she said she met a police officer who was a former gang member.

“How do we engage those individuals that have turned things around? Are we inviting them?” she said.

Tigan

Tigan said Salem’s response to violent crime shouldn’t come from the police department alone. 

“It’s going to come from a combination of the police department and community built up around that,” he said. 

In addition to gun violence, Tigan said public safety extends to making Salem’s streets, sidewalks and crosswalks safer.

He said the most dangerous thing he does every day is get into a car. He said he supports the Vision Zero initiative, which seeks to eliminate deaths on Salem’s streets through safety improvements and public education. Tigan also said implementing Salem’s Climate Action Plan is a major focus for him, and that includes making biking and walking safer.

“Too many people die in our city being hit by cars, whether they’re on a bicycle, whether they’re in another car, whether they’re walking across the street. Or camping, that’s part of our city’s recent history too,” he said. “I just don’t want to accept it, that part of moving people around the city is that some people die.”

Campaign finance and endorsements

Coleman 

Coleman has raised $4,505 as of Wednesday, April 24, according to campaign finance records. Her biggest contributors are the Oregon Realtors PAC, who contributed $1,000, and S/K Property Management and Gregg Peterson have donated $500 each.

She’s also received $1,000 in in-kind contributions from Marion + Polk First, a conservative political action committee that has previously backed slates of candidates in local school board races.

Coleman is a registered Democrat, and said she accepted aid from the conservative group  because they were willing to help her.

“Both my opponent and I are part of the same party, but we didn’t get the same reception,” she said. The Marion County Democratic Central Committee has contributed $400 in in-kind spending to her campaign.

Her endorsements include the Marion-Polk Yamhill Central Labor Chapter, County Commissioner Danielle Bethell, Salem-Keizer School Board Director Satya Chandragiri, Bishop Wade Harris, JoAnn Jackson and Peterson, BE BLAC executive director .

Tigan

Tigan has raised $11,498 as of Wednesday, April 24, according to campaign finance records. His biggest contributors are Frank Taussig, who contributed $3,000, Kristin Miller and Trevor Phillips who donated $500 each. The Marion County Democratic Central Committee has contributed $400 in in-kind spending to his campaign.

Tigan is registered as a Democrat, and his endorsements include Mayor Chris Hoy, Councilors Virginia Stapleton, Linda Nishioka, Trevor Phillips and Micki Varney. He was also endorsed by state Rep. Tom Andersen, state Sen. Deb Patterson, the Marion County Democratic Party and the Oregon League of Conservation voters.

CORRECTION: Tigan volunteers at Grant Community School, not Grant High School. Salem Reporter apologizes for the error.

Contact reporter Abbey McDonald: [email protected] or 503-575-1251

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