Steve Wright, the City Council president, is unopposed as a candidate for Seaside Mayor, replacing Jay Barber. We spoke with Wright at his Seaside home.

Q: Mayor Jay Barber is leaving. How do you assess his five years as mayor?

A: I think he’s done a great job. He’s been a good voice of reason. I think that’s a very good example to follow.

I think he looked at all sides and led the council in making whatever decisions we made regarding any of the subjects.

It doesn’t seem to me that he could have done anything really different than what he did. Now, he’s been mayor for five years. It seems to me like this has been a big time of change for Seaside.

Q: Would it be fair to say that you will emulate his managerial style?

A: Jay and I agree on a lot of things. Not necessarily similar backgrounds, but similar styles. You know, we’re not out there “rah, rah,” leading, trying to drum up excitement — just trying to lead by example, and reaching consensus and making sure that we try to cover all the bases making the best decisions for Seaside.

Q: Is the council running smoothly?

A: Very smoothly. We don’t always agree, obviously, but we don’t drag down each other. We work with each other to try to understand everybody’s viewpoint.

Q: Housing has been the great elusive issue. Can you talk about your experience over your time on the council?

A: The most promising is we’ve got the whole county involved now. Starting with Jeff Adams, the city planner in Cannon Beach, who really pushed the idea of getting the whole county together.

Tillamook County started by doing their housing study in 2015 or so, then Clatsop County got together and that was led by the county to get everybody involved in that. Seaside paid for a portion of it along with the other five cities. And then the pandemic hit and we really didn’t do anything. Tillamook had a head start. They actually created a countywide housing committee and moving forward they hired a guy about a year ago that is really pushing it forward and they’re coming out with various programs of all kinds.

Q: The city passed a camping ordinance providing overnight homeless camping at the Mill Ponds. One of the arguments against the encampment is that it will become a destination for people from outside of Seaside.

A: That’s just an issue we’ll have to deal with as it comes up.

Q: Are you satisfied with the progress at the Mill Ponds?

A: I wouldn’t say I’m satisfied. I’m OK with what’s happening. But it’s a short-term solution. We can’t keep it there. We’ve got to find something else. And city staff is trying to work on that too.

Q: Over the last year, we’ve seen a lot of calls for diversity from the LGBTQ community, the Hispanic community. Do you think that that’s something you’re going to address? Do you think that that’s evolving in a natural way?

A: It seems to me it evolves somewhat naturally. Seaside Pride held their weekend, and were overwhelmed by how much support they had. They had a great turnout. We keep reaching out trying to figure out how we can do more things in Spanish, in particular. We’re more than willing to address those issues. I’ll encourage that all I can.

Q: As far as emergency preparedness, what’s the level of the city’s readiness?

A: I think the city has always done a good job. They have all kinds of plans and they exercise the plans, they go over the plans, they have a meeting once a month to see if something needs to be tweaked or reviewed. As far as city residents, I think we have a long way to go.

That’s really where CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) comes in, to help the residents start to get prepared.

But what we’re really concentrating on is neighborhoods. For the tsunami, there’s a big earthquake first. You’ve got to get under this table, and make sure you’re OK there. And then once it’s over, you’ve got to grab your bag and go.

Do you know where to go from this house right here? Do you know the sequence of events?

Q: Work on Highway 101 from Avenue A through Avenue K starts this month. You also mentioned that work on the Avenue S bridge would also be scheduled.

A: That’s in the city budget for this year, but it won’t start until the highway project is done, because you can only have one project going at a time. And somewhere in there, we’ve got to fit in a culvert replacement over at the Wahanna ball fields, which is a shorter project but a limited time frame because of the fish.

Q: Is there anything else I haven’t touched on?

A: We’ve got a lot of people carrying over. We’re going to have a brand new finance person. We’re working on a new library director right now. It looks to me like we now have a really great core group, and a good mix between people who’ve been here longer and people that had some experience in the city.

We’ll have at least two new city councilors, the one to replace me and then the one to replace Dana (Phillips). And I want to make sure going forward that we all work well together. I hope to improve the communication within the council if I can figure out ways to do that as well. But you know, we shouldn’t stop there. We’ll keep on doing good.

Q: Are you planning on endorsing any of the other Seaside council candidates?

A: I think it’s smarter not to. Let everybody else decide. I think everybody’s a good candidate.