VOTE 2024: Matthews, Soltz running for southeast Salem council seat

In May, voters will decide who sits in the South Salem city council seat that includes the Faye Wright Neighborhood, Fairview Park and Southeast Mill Creek.

Shane Matthews, a Realtor, and Nathan Soltz, a legislative chief of staff and member of the Morningside Neighborhood Association, are running for the Ward 3 position.

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

The seat is currently held by Councilor Trevor Phillips, who was elected to city council in May 2020. His term ends on December 31. He decided not to run again due to time constraints, and endorsed Soltz.

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

Background

Shane Matthews

Matthews’ family moved to Salem when he was ten years old, and he has lived in different areas throughout the city since. He moved to Ward 3 in 2020, and before that lived a few blocks outside it, he said.

He’s Realtor who owns Matthews Real Estate, and previously worked as the Salem Health Community Benefit Coordinator, a role he said made sure that a percentage of hospital profits returned to the community. He said his work gives him a firsthand knowledge of the costs of housing and construction, and that he understands spending from a business perspective.

“That’s what the city needs right now. We need to figure out how we’re going to use the funds we have to be able to survive, and be able to still provide the services that we need for the city,” he said.

He sits on the citizens review board of the Oregon Justice Department, which he joined in 2017. The committee reviews child welfare cases, and determines if the state worked in the best interest of the child and their parents, he said. 

He said he was compelled to run for office when his mail kept getting stolen. After repeated calls to the police department he said he was told by an officer that they wanted to be able to help him, but didn’t have the staff.

The other issue that compelled him was the payroll tax a narrow majority of city councilors voted to impose last July.

“No matter what you believe on the revenue aspect of things, that same night the council voted 5-4 not to send it to the voters. It was a direct vote to not do that. And to me that shook every sense of the whole reason why the council’s there, and why everyone on that council was elected to be there,” he said.

Matthews said he doesn’t believe Salem’s issues are ward-specific, and that everyone is facing the issues of crime, homelessness and efficient spending. 

Matthews said he and Soltz are on different wavelengths. Matthews opposed the payroll tax and wants to change the way the city runs.

He said would bring a diversified background to Ward 3, and to the council. He said he barely graduated high school, has used public assistance, and is now a business owner and father of three.

“I’m the first person in my family to go to college. There was no outcome for that. That wasn’t even really in the trajectory,” he said.

As councilor, he said he hopes to make progress on reducing crime, reducing homelessness, and help make Salem a place his kids will want to settle down and raise their families in.

Nathan Soltz

Soltz grew up in Medford, moved to Salem in 2015 and has lived in Ward 3 for over four years. His mom immigrated from El Salvador, and he said he’d always had a self-driven interest in politics.

He started volunteering at age 15 in the movement to support same-sex marriage, and was brought to Salem by a post-high-school internship with state Senator Alan Bates’ office, a Democrat representing District 3 which includes Medford. He was the first person in his family to earn a four-year degree, and worked three jobs at a time to fund his studies at Chemeketa Community College and then Western Oregon University. 

In 2019, he was hired as chief of staff for state Sen. Lew Frederick, a Portland Democrat, having worked with him since 2017. He has been a board member of the Morningside Neighborhood Association since 2022, where he likes tackling local issues like trash, mail theft and tree plantings.

“For me, running for office was not something that I ever planned on doing. I just really liked civic engagement. And I like being able to do the work,” he said. “With Morningside, it’s kind of like a little mini city council.”

Soltz said that councilor Phillips had been persistent in encouraging him to run, using the same pitches Soltz uses to recruit community members to get involved. Soltz said he eventually realized he was being a hypocrite by saying no.

“I am LGBTQ, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish and young. And I’ve done a lot of work trying to recruit folks from those communities, especially. And I always tell them: if you’re politically engaged, and you’re from an underrepresented community, it’s called underrepresented for a reason, and that representation matters,” he said.

He said the the issues he wants to address in Ward 3 are homelessness, including maintaining and protecting parks; road safety; city revenue and behavioral health services, but that most issues overlap.

“If we can work efficiently and recognize that a couple of different areas are working towards the same goals, we can reduce some of the redundancy and also improve services,” he said. His goal is to improve collaboration and coordinated responses between private sectors, the county and state.

“I’ve been (in the legislature) for nine sessions. I know what it takes to have meaningful relationships with these folks. What an effective lobby pitch is like, who you need to talk to, what you need to say,” he said.

He said his professional and volunteer experience sets him apart as a candidate, and that, in contrast to Matthews, his record of engagement and donor list of local residents shows he will represent Ward 3.

As councilor, he said he plans to start by setting up meetings with the city’s staff and other councilors to streamline priorities, and to hear wants from Ward 3’s local businesses, leaders and community members.

“This is day one. Setting up those relationships and creating that really good line of communication so that as we work on all these other issues, they can know what we’re doing and I can know how they feel,” he said.

Budget

Matthews

Matthews said he wants to go back to the drawing board on the city budget, and look at how success is being measured.

“Going back and looking at things in the city through that lens, and being able to say, ‘Is this netting the outcome we need?’ And if it’s not, that doesn’t mean it has to go away, it just means we need to pivot, we need to reshift, we need to refocus, we need to replan,” he said.

He said after that, he wants to figure out where the bleeding is and stop it. 

 “I’m not going to be the guy that’s going to tell you we don’t need revenue. I’m not that guy,” he said. “We need to figure out some of our positions and our priorities, and how we’re structuring and measuring things, first before we start saying that we’re going to ask the community for ‘x’ amount more dollars.”

He also said he wants to have more transparency in city finance, and work to support local businesses through a “Salem first” mentality that would encourage community members to shop locally.

He said that as the city considers budget cuts, his biggest funding priority is maintaining public safety.

Soltz

Soltz said his legislative experience would help the city secure an annual payment from the state of Oregon, which doesn’t pay property taxes to Salem on buildings it owns. 

He said that Mayor Chris Hoy and Rep. Tom Andersen, who led the most recent effort in 2024, have done everything they can to pursue the money, but that Salem has not built sustained relationships at the capitol compared to other cities like Eugene.

“The City of Salem has to be involved in making sure that our voice is not getting drowned out, which it is right now,” he said. He said Salem needs stronger messaging that, while many cities are dealing with budget issues, Salem is unique in its challenges providing services to the state capital.

“That’s the piece of the conversation that’s missing. That framing, the communication to make sure that folks know about this issue,” he said.

Soltz also supports a special library district, which would levy its own taxes separate from the city to support library operations. He was involved in Medford’s campaign to create one. He said that support for the library engages people who might disagree on other revenue options, like the payroll tax.

“It ensures that no matter what happens to the general fund, the library gets its services,” he said. “And it takes out that burden from the general fund as well.”

Soltz also said he will respect the recommendations of the city’s Revenue Task Force, who he said are doing the hard work to find solutions before his term would begin.

Homelessness and housing

Matthews

Matthews said that the city has taken on the role of providing homeless services, and in the long-term he’ll support whatever route addresses the issue, whether that be the city continuing to provide services or supporting county efforts.

“It’s irrelevant who’s doing it, it matters that a success is being made,” he said. 

He said he wants to see more investment in addressing the causes of homelessness, including trauma, finances, mental health and addiction, rather than just the housing-first approach. He said he hasn’t seen success in the city’s current programs, citing the number of overdose calls coming from city-funded shelters.

He said he also wants to see stronger metrics of what long-term success looks like for people participating in programs.

Soltz

Soltz said that a housing-first approach works. He sees success in downtown Salem now compared to during the pandemic, before the city invested in micro shelters, the navigation center and other programs. But he said that there will always be more work to do.

He said that whatever underlying issues someone faces, having a warm, secure place to sleep and keep their things allows them to get treatment and services they need.

“If you’re living on the street, and if you leave everything that you own behind so you can go get this (service), not knowing that it will be there when you come back, whether it’s somebody else taking it or somebody sweeping it from the city, that is not a way that we can expect somebody to actually make progress,” he said.

He said that he supports tying affordable housing and services together to address the current crisis, while increasing middle-housing development so that people have places to move into from the shelters in the longer-term.

“It’s about preventative things, so that councils 10, 20, 30 years from now don’t have to say, ‘Nobody can find a place to live in the city because we don’t have the middle housing,’” he said.

Public safety

Matthews

Matthews said public safety is his top priority, and said that there’s a feeling in the community that no one goes to jail for long, and that the system is overwhelmed by the level of crime happening.

“We’re seeing across the city that we have a crime issue,” he said.

He said he also wants to see alternative options like the planned sobering center, a place for police or emergency room providers to send people who are under the influence of alcohol who need a place to sleep it off.

“Throwing people in jail and leaving them there, that rarely works,” he said, but that he feels like there’s a lack of accountability.

“I want to see more cohesive implementation where criminalization is used as a tool to encourage people to utilize programs such as mental health court, veterans treatment court, drug court, (law enforcement assisted diversion), etc.,” he said.

Matthews said he’s hopeful about Police Chief Trevor Womack’s community policing plan, but it remains untested.

“If we don’t see crime go down, it’s not successful,” he said. “If we still are having crime issues, and everyone’s still having that same unsafe feeling, then it’s not successful.”

Soltz

Soltz said that Salem’s staffing level for public safety is already too low, and he doesn’t want to see further cuts that would increase response times. He also said he supports a model which would pair mental health workers with addiction recovery mentors to respond to some crisis calls instead of police. 

He said the county should support the program, and it would be a good opportunity to partner with them. He said sending police to such calls is not efficient, and it would make for better service to people calling 911.

“Even if the county doesn’t recognize the benefit of supporting this kind of program or partnering with the city on it, it is still a worthwhile program for the city to pursue, and we’ve seen that it works very well at the city level,” he said, referring to Eugene’s CAHOOTS program.

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.

He said that like police and fire, he sees the library and homeless services as essential. Cutting the latter, he said, would increase the burden on emergency response services. He said that he wants to work with the state and county when it comes to allocating mental health and housing money.

“When you say you’re prioritizing public safety, that doesn’t mean just give all the money to police and fire,” he said. “It means making sure that you’re doing everything else to make sure that the burden on police and fire is reduced.”

He said the police department’s Community Violence Reduction Initiative is a step in the right direction, and appreciates Womack’s flexibility and engagement to try to address shootings in Salem.

“Addressing this issue is going to take the community,” he said. “And you need a cultural shift. Recognizing that whatever somebody’s views on gun rights are, it’s unacceptable that a teenager right next to a school can do what happened,” referring to the March shooting at Bush’s Pasture Park.

Campaign finance and endorsements

Matthews

Matthews has raised $50,699 as of April 25, according to campaign finance records. His biggest contributors include the Mid-Valley Affordable Housing Coalition, who donated $7,500, the Organization for Educational Technology and Curriculum, who donated $5,000 and $3,726 of in-kind contributions from the Oregon Realtors PAC.

Marion + Polk First, a conservative political action committee that has previously backed slates of candidates in local school board races, has contributed $3,250 in in-kind spending.

Mountain West Investment Corp., owned by Larry Tokarski, donated $1,000. Tokarski a founder and owner of Salem Reporter. He is not involved in news coverage produced by Salem Reporter.  Read more on that here.

Matthews’ endorsements include the Salem Police Employees Union, Salem Firefighters Local 314, the Mid Valley Association of REALTORS, the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce and the Mid-Valley Affordable Housing Coalition.

Soltz

Soltz has raised $19,567 as of April 25, according to campaign finance records. His biggest contributors include Phillips with a $2,500 donation, Richard Yates with $2,000 and the Friends of Kien campaign for a Portland Community College board seat, which donated $1,600.

His endorsements include U.S. Representative Andrea Salinas, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, State Senator Deb Patterson, State Representatives Tom Andersen and Paul Evans, Mayor Chris Hoy, Council President Virginia Stapleton, the Marion-Polk-Yamhill Central Labor Chapter and the Oregon League of Conservation Voters.

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

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