Frequently asked questions

I’m a software entrepreneur in education and Vice Chair of the Corvallis Planning Commission. My wife Mattea and I have lived in Corvallis since 2019. We’re raising our two daughters here and plan to stay for the rest of our lives.

My neighbors near Garfield asked me to. They’d gone months without hearing back from our representative, and they wanted someone who would answer. My #1 focus is jump-starting the local economy, because affordability, the budget and resilience all depend on it. The timing matters too: six of our nine councilors aren’t running again in 2026, so the council will be mostly new after that election. It needs people who already know the details and will do the work.

I’m Vice Chair of the Planning Commission. To prepare for that job I read the whole Land Development Code, about 730 pages, and I re-read it every time we amend it. I’d also be the only councilor working in a decision-making private-sector role. I’ve managed budgets, hired people and made hard tradeoffs with real money on the line.

No current councilor has children at home. Council decisions shape the city our kids will inherit over the next 50 to 70 years. Families raising those kids should have a voice in the room, and young families are some of the main users of places like the library and our parks. It’s important that someone on council understands that perspective, especially when it comes to library and parks policy.

I’m a localist: city government should focus on streets, parks, the local economy and not going bankrupt. I’m an urbanist: you shouldn’t need a car to live in a city. I’m a “conservative liberal”: our American system is basically well designed and mostly needs careful management. And I’m a Georgist: taxes shouldn’t penalize hard work or investment. There’s more on my About page.

Not in town. I walk and e-bike everywhere, often with my toddler along, unless I’m hauling something or with a larger group.

No. City Council is a nonpartisan institution. I won’t spend council time on national, global or culture-war fights. I’ll focus us on the local basics.

I’m proud to be endorsed by many proven leaders in our community: former Ward 6 City Councilors Laurie Chaplen and Stewart Wershow; former Mayor of Corvallis Biff Traber; Benton County Commissioner Pat Malone; current Corvallis Council President Tony Cadena; and more. I’m also endorsed by organizations like the Corvallis Area Chamber of Commerce and SAFE (Streets Are For Everyone) Corvallis. See the full list here.

I’ve pledged to hold one every quarter, the most frequent of any councilor.

Definitely, if you live in Ward 6. If you don’t, I’d still like to if I have time.

Every time, certainly within a week, and usually within a day.

Yes, every page. One Planning Commission packet ran over 1,100 pages. Government is mostly boring homework, but the details are where things go wrong or right.

It takes five votes to pass anything. I make my case to colleagues in their own terms, look for the answer that works for everyone, and take a loss in good humor and move on to the next thing. People who disagree usually disagree about facts, not values, and there’s almost always a solution people of good will can share.

Not if I can help it. A council term has only about 40 business meetings. Each one belongs to Corvallis.

In most towns the biggest employers are also big taxpayers. Ours aren’t. OSU is part of government and the hospital is a nonprofit, so both are exempt from property tax. HP, still our largest private taxpayer, has shrunk from about 10,000 workers and contractors in the mid-1990s to a small fraction of that. As a result, homes and apartments pay nearly two-thirds of Benton County’s property taxes, and state Measures 5 and 50 keep those taxes from keeping pace with costs.

Officially it’s the “city services” bill. Only part of it pays for water; the rest helps cover police, fire, streets and trees. In 2026 the council raised it by about $263 a year for the average household, nearly 15%. Our tax structure can’t cover basic services, so the city keeps going back to households, and it will keep doing that until something major changes.

Fix it for good. The only lasting way out is a bigger tax base, which means more private investment in Corvallis. I’ll look at revenue and costs over 20 years, not two, so we stop reaching for a “one-time” patch every couple of years. In the short term, I’m open to a range of options, whether a small flat income tax or drawing on reserves on an extremely temporary basis while we get things under control.

Long-term, the only real way out is growing the tax base through private investment. Short-term, I’m open to looking at options.

I prefer an income tax to a payroll tax. An income tax falls on people who live in Corvallis, as the city services bill does.

As I currently understand it, a city payroll tax can’t be levied on OSU, so OSU wouldn’t pay the employer half, while the hospital would. A payroll tax also pushes employers just outside city limits, and then they stop paying property taxes and everything else here. That disincentive might be offset if the revenue funds economic development that makes it easier for businesses to come here, with the goal of a positive return on investment.

A flat rate with a reasonable standard deduction would already be far more progressive than the regressive head taxes and city services fees we rely on now. “Just tax the rich” won’t raise meaningful money in a town with few very high earners and suburbs a mile away. It’s fairer for everyone to pay a similar share.

I’m not promising cuts. But heading into a budget crisis, it isn’t honest to say we’ll look at nothing, and before the city asks anyone for a new tax it should show it has taken a hard look at its own spending. Homelessness and support services are more explicitly the county’s and state’s job than the city’s, and when the city does spend here, I don’t think it spends efficiently. Every program needs a clear goal and numbers we can check, like dollars spent per person helped. If the goal is fewer people living outside, homelessness in Corvallis has kept rising, so we need to be clear about what we’re trying to achieve and whether it’s working.

Not necessarily. The council can pass a tax by ordinance, and I’d be comfortable doing that if the case is extremely well justified and the community has truly been heard first. If people really dislike it, they can still refer it to the ballot.

City Hall is an older building that isn’t in great shape and needs ongoing maintenance. I’ve heard figures in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But that maintenance bill doesn’t necessarily justify spending hundreds of millions on something brand new, especially while the city isn’t on solid long-term financial footing. The campus also shouldn’t be tied to the operating budget gap. I understand that construction costs keep rising and people want to move soon, but I’m not sold on the current design or vision, and getting it right matters more than any timeline. It belongs in one integrated plan for downtown, along with Madison Avenue, parking and the TIF district, and that plan should make downtown more alive.

OSU keeps producing high-paying, high-tech startups, and then they grow up somewhere else... and take their jobs and property taxes with them. Agility Robotics came out of an OSU lab and built its robot factory, designed for more than 500 workers, in Salem. Valliscor is headquartered here but is building its new manufacturing campus in Albany. We need to stop hobbling the local economy: find out why each one left, and change our rules so the next one stays.

Normal cities pay for services by taxing local employers. More private investment means more revenue, so we can keep services good and taxes and fees low. It also brings better-paying jobs and more housing, which makes the city more affordable.

Find and fix the specific rules that drive investment away, one at a time. As Vice Chair of the Planning Commission, I successfully moved to make asking builders, lenders and developers how our code gets in their way the commission’s #1 discretionary priority. On council I’d push for an audit of what’s holding back our industrial land, and I’d personally market Corvallis to the tech and startup world I work in. I’d also do everything we can that costs nothing to show our attitude has changed and we want investment: dig into the details, actively seek out negative feedback from businesses, and pass a council resolution declaring Corvallis open for business. Much of this is about trust and posture, showing that we genuinely care about investment and want it here.

I’m open to them if they meet every noise, air and water rule and don’t raise anyone’s power bill. They’re essentially buildings full of expensive computers, and the owners pay property tax on that equipment. We already have several in town, downtown, by the airport and on campus. They sit in nondescript buildings, some along major northwest thoroughfares, that you’d never pick out. Because I serve on the Planning Commission, I can’t prejudge any specific application that might come before us.

Build more of it. Housing follows supply and demand. The city and state have made real progress removing barriers to private construction, and we should keep going, especially in the flat, walkable core. That includes taking a hard look at fees and mandates that make new homes and infill harder to build. Austin, Texas removed barriers on nearly every front, and rents fell even as the city grew. We should copy their homework.

City Hall, the police station, Madison Avenue, parking and the urban renewal (TIF) district belong together. We should decide on one unified vision for downtown, then actually implement it: walkable, easy to reach, safe enough that families want to spend time there, and open to our riverfront.

Make the bus usable without a schedule: about 10 trips an hour on key routes, so you can just walk to the stop. Build safer bike routes too. I don’t drive in town, but I know parking matters to a lot of neighbors, as Garfield showed. I’m open to closing some streets to cars and to small parking fees, as long as parking stays easy to find, accessible to everyone and plentiful. I don’t want to price anyone out.

Go after the root causes: not enough housing, and addiction and mental-health crises. That means building more homes, supporting intervention programs, and consistently enforcing laws against disorder, vandalism and theft so parks stay usable for families and kids. For more than a year, before my first daughter was born, I went out every Saturday with a group from my church to bring sandwiches to people in encampments and listen to their stories. There are people down on their luck whom we should help. I also want city dollars tied to results we can actually measure.

In principle, yes, but only if a proposal clears four bars. A capable organization other than the city has to run it; Eugene and Lincoln City have one, and Corvallis doesn’t. It has to be within walking or bus distance of downtown. It can’t be right next to neighbors who would be meaningfully disturbed by noise or crime. And it has to be on safe land: out of the floodplain and off our riverbanks and natural areas, and not in parks like Avery or Central Park. I’m not sure Corvallis has a site that meets all four. If a proposal did, I’d vote for it.

I’m strongly against mass-surveillance technology. It is useful, and that’s the problem: it can be turned in a flash against people’s speech and privacy. Thankfully, the City of Corvallis doesn’t use Flock cameras and has no plans to.

Being ready for heat waves, wildfire smoke, fire and winter storms is basic local duty, and so is continuing to earthquake-proof our infrastructure. On emissions, the biggest thing Corvallis can do is enable the clean-tech companies that start here, building batteries, solar and electric technology, to stay here, thrive, and supply the future of healthier technology to the world.

Yes, strongly. I serve as secretary of the committee working to pass it. After the November 2026 election, six or seven of nine councilors will be brand new. Staggered four-year terms mean at least half the council carries over each cycle, and a smaller council can get through its business faster.

I won’t take sides on the details at the bargaining table, because I’m not intimately familiar with the proposals. But I know the budget is tight, so at a minimum the city should be offering every non-economic concession it possibly can. The strike points to the same two problems as everything else: too little long-term planning and too little money. My daughter’s library story time was canceled during the strike, and I’d like it back.

Put up a yard sign, volunteer, have me over to meet your neighbors, or donate. Canvassing and signs along Walnut, Grant, Kings and 9th help most.

Use the contact page or ask me anything. I read and answer every message myself. You can also text or call me at 206-658-3935, or email brennan@colbergforcorvallis.com.