VOTE 2024: Two unrelated Hoys seek Salem mayor seat

Salem’s next mayor will be a Hoy, as incumbent Mayor Chris Hoy faces Salem City Councilor Julie Hoy in the May election.

Chris Hoy won the mayoral primary in May 2022, and was appointed to the position a few months early after former Mayor Chuck Bennett resigned early that November. 

Julie Hoy, a local business owner and Ward 6 city councilor, holds Chris Hoy’s former council seat and announced her candidacy for mayor in November. Her campaign has since brought in over $235,000 in campaign contributions, with heavy spending from Salem area businesses, compared to just under $26,000 taken in by the incumbent

The two Hoys are not related and have at times butted heads in council meetings, most frequently over city budget and revenue options.

The position of mayor is an unpaid, nonpartisan volunteer job who serves a two-year term. The mayor is a voting member of city council who presides over its meetings, and also appoints council members to city boards and commissions.

Here are their perspectives on key Salem issues including the city’s budget shortfall, homelessness and public safety. 

Salem Reporter and the Salem City Club are hosting a public debate on Tuesday, April 30, starting at 6 p.m. See here for free tickets or to watch it online.  

Background

Chris Hoy

Since being elected mayor, Hoy said he is proudest of his efforts to support Salem’s homeless community by increasing shelter capacity and adding affordable apartments. He’s been the vice chair of the Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance since its founding, and led sheltering efforts in his time on council. 

He pointed to the May 2023 opening of Yaquina Hall, an affordable housing project run by the Salem Housing Authority, and the April 2023 opening of the Navigation Center which shelters 75 homeless Salemites while helping them find permanent housing. Hoy described the Yaquina project as a “herculean effort” from himself and city staff due to acquisition roadblocks.

Hoy said his other top accomplishments are getting city staff and council on board with the effort to invest in bringing back commercial air service to Salem amid a transition of city manager leadership, and leading the successful campaign for Salem’s $300 million infrastructure bond in 2022.

“Everything’s a group effort, but it takes leadership and it takes drive,” he said.

Hoy said that being mayor has increased the number of calls he gets from constituents asking about everything from water and sewer to the library and police.

“When you’re the mayor you have to know quite a bit about a lot of things,” he said. “You have to be able to understand the issues at a depth (so) that people, when they ask you about them, you have confidence in answering their questions.”

He said that the biggest issues the city faces are unsustainable revenue and homelessness.

“The thing that drives me to run again is the thing that drove me to run the first time, when I ran for council: I want to make Salem better,” he said. “I’m not ready to stop, and I feel like there’s a lot of really important work to be done.”

Hoy said that, in comparison to Julie Hoy, he has the experience and track record showing he knows how to get things done.

Hoy said that in his next term, he will continue to address homelessness, increase housing stock, improve downtown and come up with a long-term solution to the city’s revenue problem.

“My opponent thinks we don’t have a revenue problem, and I challenge her to show me, to show anybody, the math that says that’s true,” he said.

Julie Hoy

Hoy said that in her time on council, she’s proudest of her opposition to the payroll tax, which a majority of councilors voted to impose. She was one of four councilors to vote against the tax last July before voters shot it down in November.

The issue compelled her to run for mayor.

“I was frankly in disbelief that something like this could actually be done. And then I was in disbelief as the process went along. You mean you can make up this thing without defining it?” she said. “So in all of that, I was like ‘Oh man, I think I’m being called to do something higher and something deeper so I can do more about righting these wrongs and figuring out the finances.’”

She said her other accomplishments include learning more about the city council and budget processes, and getting to know Salem.

“Ward 6 is the highest density population ward, with the most amount of people in the least amount of space, and 48% Hispanic. And out of those 22,000 people less than 2,000 vote,” she said. “So getting to understand the dynamics of this ward has been quite something.”

She said that in her time on council, she has brought people’s concerns about public safety to the city, and has stood up for small businesses. 

“Bringing that to council, I think, has been a real accomplishment and a difficulty because I have not felt heard. And if I don’t feel heard and I’m at all the meetings, then how does everyone else feel?” she said. “A lack of clarity and communication with the community is not helping build trust, and that’s what I’m doing one neighbor at a time.”

Hoy believes the biggest issue Salem faces is homelessness, which she said is driven by addiction and mental health issues which are the county’s responsibility. She said there’s more potential for cooperation with the county.

Hoy said that Chris Hoy has been in the system for a long time, and that she will bring optimism to the role.

“Bitterness and cynicism don’t own me, and I am a person of hope that there is better for Salem,” she said. “You want my elevator pitch? Things will be much brighter,” she said.

Budget

Chris Hoy

Hoy said that Salem is challenged because of ballot measures passed in the 1990s which capped the property tax increase on most properties in the city to 3% per year.

“Our population is not limited to 3%, our costs aren’t limited to 3%, nothing else is artificially limited,” he said. “And we don’t control most of our costs. People think we can just ‘run it like a business,’ but we don’t make a profit, and most of our wages we don’t get to set, those are set by a third party. We can control how many employees we have, but we can’t necessarily control how much they make.”

Hoy wants to see the state contribute to city revenue to make up for its exemption from property taxes. He tried to get a bill passed to require such a payment when he was a legislator.

He said he supported Rep. Tom Andersen’s 2024 effort by meeting with Gov. Tina Kotek, negotiating terms and meeting with cities in the state facing similar revenue issues.

Hoy proposed using money from the city’s hotel tax to fund library jobs for one year, keeping the West Salem Branch open The city’s budget committee unanimously approved his motion on April 17.

Hoy said that the city will need a combination of new revenue options to support its services, and is looking forward to the revenue task force’s recommendations. The group is meeting through June to explore new ways to bring money into the city.

“I hope that they come up with something that the community will support. That’s the whole point,” he said. “People keep thinking that we don’t know what to do and we need them to tell us, that’s not the point. This is about building momentum, this is about building community behind a solution.”

Hoy voted in favor of the payroll tax in July, and said he knew it wasn’t going to be popular but he thought it was the right thing to do to fund city services.

“All the big money came in from all over the country and all over the state to kill this thing, and they killed it. Fine, great. Now we’ve got to try to figure out another solution. I was trying to figure out a way to spread the tax burden out beyond just our residents, and actually get the people who are using our services to help pay for them. People weren’t interested.”

He said he hopes voters who opposed the payroll tax will look at the broader picture of his work when casting their ballot.

“It’s a mistake to be a single-issue voter on any level in any race,” he said. “Find one other person on this planet with whom you agree with 100% of the time.”

Julie Hoy

Hoy said that the city needs to change the way it approaches its budget process, and she feels that the budget committee members don’t have enough time to evaluate city spending.

Hoy said that she wants more opportunities throughout the year to evaluate department spending outside of the several budget committee meetings. 

“Four hundred and sixty pages, full-color, beautiful book. But $757 million or so, and in four meetings I’m supposed to say yes or no to this?” she said.

She said she generally believes the city needs more revenue, but she wants it to reevaluate its forecasting. She said she hasn’t gotten a clear picture on the dollar amount the city needs.

“Because the cliff has been predicted for so long, and it’s never come. And now you hear people talking about, ‘Everybody else just kicked the can down the road, and now we have to do the hard work.’ Well … we have to do it openly so that the community can buy in,” she said.

She said one revenue option would be through county collaboration, like using the city’s $2 million share of federal opioid settlement funds and anticipated payouts ranging from $600,000 to $300,000, through 2039 to expand housing and homelessness teams.

She said that the appearance of the city’s spending is that it funds major projects, like a public works building, without addressing public safety.

“I don’t want the library to close. I never did, really. We had some serious conversations in the past about what is the priority,” she said. “Like any household you have to make your decisions based on priorities, and safety is that.” 

Hoy voted against cutting vacant city jobs in February and did not name specific cuts she would support.

Homelessness and housing

Chris Hoy

Hoy said that he’s learned a lot during the effort to increase Salem’s sheltering capacity.

“You can’t just take somebody out of a camp from years of living in a tent and put them in an apartment with no support, and expect them to succeed,” he said. He said that’s why the city pivoted toward options like permanent supportive housing and the Navigation Center which have support services.

The shelters were paid for using one-time Covid funding, without sustainable revenue lined up beyond the first few years of operation. Hoy said he opened them anyway because it was a humanitarian crisis.

“People were dying on the street, and it wasn’t acceptable to me. We went in with our eyes wide open, knowing we would have to come up with funding. I wish that we weren’t in that situation, because cities are not equipped to do social services,” he said. “And our tax system has never adjusted.”

He said the county hasn’t been able to provide the services Salem needs, and that he has a great relationship with some county leaders, but not with others who he feels have politicized the issue of homelessness.

Hoy said Salem needs more mental health services, more behavioral health services and a sobering center, which Bridgeway Recovery Services is planning to build using state funds. He said that the state also needs to reevaluate its laws on involuntary commitment for people in crisis.

“There’s a population of folks who need something that we don’t have,” he said.

He said Salem also needs more housing, and the city is offering incentives and working to streamline the development process by way of combining staff teams. 

Julie Hoy

Hoy said that Salem’s homeless situation is driven by addiction and mental health issues, a county responsibility that the city is not equipped to handle.

“And for some reason the city is not working well with the county,” she said. “There’s so much more potential for what we can do in cooperation with the county.”

Hoy said she wants to work with the county and state to improve wraparound mental health and addiction resources.

She said she would communicate better with the county because she communicates differently than Chris Hoy, and is a natural networker.

“I am not bitter or cynical,” she said. “I want to know what you know and bring it together to make things better for everyone.”

She said that the city needs all kinds of housing, and wants more homes for people who live in apartments to move into.

“Then you can build. It’s not just your monthly income going toward where you live. And it builds the entire community when people can invest like that,” she said.

She said that she doesn’t think the city’s homeless services have been successful, and that there hasn’t been accountability from the city’s nonprofit partners.

“What are the metrics? That’s my question. What is the return on investment? What are the actual outcomes? How much success have we actually had?” she said.

She said that the Housing Authority and Salem Outreach and Livability Services team are getting the closest thing to a real count of Salem’s unhoused population, but there’s a lot of money going into data entry systems that don’t communicate. The Mid-Willamette Valley Homeless Alliance opted not to conduct its homeless point time count this year so it can improve its data management.

Hoy said she wants more data showing the long-term outcomes for people who used the services, and where they ended up.

“We need a leader. We need someone who’s going to draw all these things together and allow the open communication to happen that needs to happen,” she said.

Public safety

Chris Hoy

On his campaign website and in the Voter’s Pamphlet, Chris Hoy said that he’s supported Salem police in “implementing a successful community policing model.”

The department hasn’t implemented Chief Trevor Womack’s proposed community policing model which would put teams in neighborhoods where they could work with citizens and business owners rather than just respond to emergency calls. Womack said last year he would need over a dozen new officers to get started. Those jobs would have been funded by the payroll tax.

“A successful community policing model is not just being reactive but about being proactive and developing the relationships in the community, and I feel like the chief is doing a great job of doing that,” Hoy said, including slight reorganization in the department.

“That’s how I measure success right now. It’s not like ‘Okay now we’re done.’ That rarely happens in government … you build the momentum toward it,” he said. 

Hoy has spearheaded the city’s Community Violence Reduction Initiative, which plans to bring together law enforcement agencies and community organizations to focus on preventing shootings. Hoy and Womack led several recent town halls to discuss community violence and are working to develop a violence reduction plan this year.

Hoy said the long timeline for an urgent issue doesn’t work for him, but it’s reality.

“I don’t have a magic wand to throw more money at the problem,” he said. 

He said hundreds turning up to the town halls is significant. In the coming years, he said Hoy wants to see more officers who can engage with the community outside of crisis time.

Hoy said he believes their and the police union’s endorsement represent their shift toward conservative politics rather than the issues they face.

Julie Hoy

Hoy said that having her home and business in northeast Salem, which has seen the most gun violence in recent years, has given her heightened awareness of community crime.

Hoy said that the heart of the issue is a broken community and hurting families.

“We have certain nonprofit organizations in this town who are doing a beautiful job of helping in the best way they can with the funding that they receive to help families to regain health and raise children in a healthy manner,” she said. Those include Family Building Blocks, the Boys & Girls Club and Liberty House Children’s Advocacy Center.

She said that stronger community connections would prevent young people from joining gangs or hanging out with bad influences. Hoy also supports having student resource officers in the schools to connect with students.

As mayor, she said she would continue to facilitate conversations through public forums, and would support police and county outreach and research into the issue.

Campaign finance and endorsements

Chris Hoy

Hoy has raised $25,684 as of April 29. His top donors include Nadene LeCheminant ($3,000) and City Councilor Trevor Phillips ($2,500).

According to his voter’s pamphlet, his endorsements include Salem City Councilors Virginia Stapleton, Linda Nishioka, Trevor Phillips and Micki Varney. He has also been endorsed by Polk County Commissioner Jeremy Gordon, State Senator Deb Patterson, State Rep. Tom Andersen, AFCME Local 2067 which represents city of Salem employees and the Oregon League of Conservation Voters.

Julie Hoy

Hoy has raised $235,238 as of April 29. Her top donors include Oregon Realtors PAC, with $30,634 in in-kind contributions.

Mountain West Investment Corp has donated $19,104 in-kind, and owner Larry Tokarski has contributed $20,000 in cash.

Her endorsements include the Salem Police Employees Union, Salem Firefighters Local 314, the Mid-Valley Association of REALTORS, the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce and Oregon Hispanic Business Association.

DISCLOSURE: Larry Tokarski is a founder and an owner of Salem Reporter. He is not involved in news coverage produced by Salem Reporter. Read more on that here.

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

SUPPORT OUR WORK – We depend on subscribers for resources to report on Salem with care and depth, fairness and accuracy. Subscribe today to get our daily newsletters and more. Click I want to subscribe!