City Council Corner

Council Corner by Council President Jim Maguire

Hello neighbors! Thank you for entrusting me to represent your interests, the interests of ALL Dayton residents, as a member of the City Council for the next four years. Volunteer, non-partisan positions such as our City Council are truly a labor of love – love for our neighbors, love for our city, and love for the work that goes into making our little town a great place to live, work, raise kids, walk, bike, and play. In my mind, it is a position whose responsibility is to put people over politics, always.

A little about me – I come from a family of service. My grandfather served as the Chief of Police of San Francisco. Two of my uncles served as Army officers during the Vietnam War, my father deployed three times during Vietnam and retired from the US Navy, and I served as a commissioned naval officer during the first Persian Gulf War. I have always wanted to give back in some way to the country and communities that offered my immigrant Irish-American family the opportunities we all hope for ourselves. The high-tech sector is what brought my husband and I to Oregon in 2001, and in this spirit, I have served on volunteer boards and commissions in each of the three cities in which we have lived in Oregon.

The City Council is the policy-making body for the City of Dayton, and my hope, as your City Council President, is to be a constructive member of the seven-person team that will continue the work past city councils have accomplished, improve upon them when we can, and continue to plan and lead our city into a prosperous future.

And now I have a favor to ask of YOU. We hold our City Council meetings at 6:30pm on the first Monday of every month – a date and time we hope is conducive to allowing as many Dayton residents as possible to be able to attend and let us know about your concerns. We set aside time at the beginning of every meeting for our neighbors to come to the council and speak their mind – yet, very few take advantage of this opportunity. PLEASE come to council meetings and see how we get things done. Three minutes does not seem like a long time, but you can give us a lot of information about what is important to you, as our neighbors and constituents, in those three minutes. We would love to hear from you.