Incumbent Ryan Ceniga is running to represent West Lane on the Board of County Commissioners. He said he’s seeking another term to advocate for housing and rural communities.
He’s challenged by Thomas Hiura, a Eugene small business owner who says local government needs to include voices that haven’t always felt welcome at the county level.
Ceniga is a member of the Junction City School Board and a county commissioner.
He said one of his biggest priorities is housing. He supports the county’s landbanking efforts, which is when the government buys difficult to build on land and resolves legal, or infrastructure issues so it can be developed.
Ceniga said the county also needs to look at expanding the urban growth reserve to address the shortage of homes.
“The reality is we need some more front doors,” Ceniga said. “Housing is really hard to come by and it's made the prices go up. So we need to continue down these hard paths, these tough decisions."
His opponent, Thomas Hiura is a member of the Lane ESD Board, a regional agency that supports local school districts.
He said he’s running for commissioner because new voices are needed. Hiura said he was unhoused as a young adult and has been a tenant who has struggled to manage rent increases, two perspectives often missing in upper positions of leadership.
"I want the people who have grown up here, who have invested their lives and raised their families and gone to school and gone to church, whatever it is they may do, to feel deeply included” Hiura said. “And, not feel they're having this stress and this strain around, 'do I have adequate public services to continue living here, or am I going to have to relocate?"’
Hiura said the other reason he decided to run was concern about transparency and discord on the county commissioners over the last year.
He says he also disagrees with Ceniga’s decision to not support censuring a fellow commissioner accused of retaliation.
"We don't have trust and accountability in Lane County government and that's going to effect and bleed through towards all other issues and right now,” Hiura said. “We don't have an environment where we think the commissioners are really working well together."
Ceniga, who is the current chair of the Board, says he’s made an effort to understand every board member’s approach to the role and perspective.
He said commissioners represent very different districts, and sometimes viewpoints, and can face outside pressure that can make things more tense in Harris Hall.
"I've worked really hard as chair to be as neutral as I can with my fellow commissioners,” Ceniga said. “I don't mean agreeing with everybody, I mean treating everybody with the utmost respect. That's equal talking time, that's not talking over each other."
According to campaign finance records, Ceniga’s biggest financial supporters include Kathleen Jones-McCann, whose family owned several timber businesses and Wildish Land Co.
Hiura, who has been campaigning for just a few months, has raised money from individual donors including a few Eugene 4J School District board members and Kori Rodley, a Springfield City Councilor who is now running for state office.
The West Lane District includes Junction City, Veneta and parts of Eugene and stretches to Florence on the coast.
