A three-way race for Seat 4 on the Bend City Council pits the council’s longest-serving member, Barb Campbell, against Steve Platt, a veteran and high school science teacher backed by the rest of the council, and Chet Wamboldt, a former firefighter and risk assessment professional.

Seat 4 is the only City Council contest in which voters will choose between more than two candidates.

After a decade on the council, Campbell believes she has more to offer, and that her experience gives her an edge over her two newcomer opponents.

“I have not lost my enthusiasm,” Campbell said. “When it comes to (constituents) writing City Council saying ‘can you help me’, the person who is most likely to write back and say ‘I have an idea’ it’s gonna be me. I’m gonna be the one to say ‘I can try.’”

Though Campbell is a longtime Democrat, she does not have the endorsement of the county Democratic Party. That went to Platt, a former Air Force pilot, teacher and first-time politician with knowledge on the city’s budget. Potentially looking to wedge his way into any divide between left-leaning voters is Chet Wamboldt, who says he would bring an alternative voice to the unified council.

“A lot of the choices that are being made by the council don’t reflect what the community wants,” Wamboldt said. “They’re voting 7-0 on way too many topics.”

Campbell looks to hold seat

Campbell, 60, has lived in Bend since 1991 and worked a variety of jobs including construction, hospitality and service, eighth-grade science teacher and downtown business owner.

Originally from Pueblo County, Colorado, Campbell has a bachelor’s degree in biology and psychology from the University of Denver and a teaching certificate from Eastern Oregon University.

She got into politics through activism spurred by dissatisfaction with the Second Gulf War. She said she is motivated by a challenge and the work of helping people solve problems.

“Being able to help people, it is just thrilling,” she said. “I just feel like I’ve gotten really good at it.”

Campbell represents the council on the Bend Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Central Oregon Area Commission on Transportation, both of which are heavily involved with the Oregon Department of Transportation. More than other assignments, the skills and relationships built from serving on those transportation boards will be the most valuable if reelected, she said.

“ODOT is beside me,” she said. “I know where the right people are.”

She said she wants to prioritize building sidewalks and maintaining the current street system rather than building expensive new capital projects. She supported the Transportation Utility Fee for maintenance earlier this year and has said a seasonal gas tax could be an option for funding transportation needs in the future.

But housing, not transportation, is the No. 1 issue for Campbell. She said she used her role on the Bend Metropolitan Planning Organization to direct transportation funds to infrastructure for affordable housing.

On the council, she supported policies intended to spur creation of housing, including tax incentives for housing developers and lowering system development charges for affordable housing.

The united City Council has accomplished “amazing things,” she said. But hers has occasionally been a lone dissenting voice on the council, most recently when she opposed tightening vehicle sheltering rules from three days to 24 hours to align with the city’s tent camping code.

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“Frankly, I think right now there are some folks on council who are just too concerned about appearances, too concerned about not talking about the problems out loud,” she said. “I don’t know how you could possibly start working on any problems unless you have first started admitting you have that problem.”

Council supports Platt

Platt, 56, flew jets for 25 years in the Air Force. For the last six years, he’s taught high school science in Central Oregon. He said those jobs taught him the value of service and gave him the background to add insight to the City Council.

If elected, he said, he would be the only active teacher, union member and veteran on the council.

Platt has supported policies of the current council — every member of which, including Mayor Melanie Kebler, has endorsed him, except for his Seat 4 opponent, Campbell.

Platt grew up on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan before joining the Air Force Academy and rising to the rank of colonel, when he managed “widely diverse groups trying to find a way forward.” He retired in 2015 and moved to Bend shortly after.

He said he gained budget experience in the military, which led him to join the city’s budget committee in 2023. Fiscal stewardship and budget transparency are a top priority, he said.

“I have a pretty informed position about the way the budget was developed and the way it’s being executed,” he said.

Platt praised the council’s work on homelessness, but said he would work to create more outdoor shelters and parking areas, a few of which are already in the works.

Platt said housing for essential workers would also be a focus, citing Bend’s lack of affordability through anecdotes about fellow teachers and students’ families. He sees opportunity for improvement in the city’s permit application process. He wants to refine the process with a “deep dive” to set clear and detailed expectations for builders, hopefully eliminating the need for developers to meet additional criteria after submitting an initial application.

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That could increase the number of building permits issued and the time it takes to approve each one, he said, recognizing that the process of reworking the code will also take much time and effort.

“I’m not afraid of details and just moving the ball incrementally forward,” he said.

Wamboldt would break uniform council

After Wamboldt fell short in a bid for Bend-La Pine School Board last year, he set his sights on city government, running his campaign to “bring back balance” to a council that’s most often unified.

He said he would check spending and question council decisions on housing, growth and transportation.

“We hire politicians to argue for us, civilly, and they’re not doing that,” he said.

Wamboldt, 42, moved to Bend 14 years ago from Sierra Madre, California, a town near the mountains in Southern California. He co-founded Surge Consulting, a risk management, where he still works. Before that he was a firefighter, EMT and first responder for the federal government in natural disasters, he said.

Through door-knocking efforts, Wamboldt said Bend residents are most concerned about traffic and congestion. Wamboldt said he believes in the notion that if more people used bicycles there would be fewer cars on the road, but said he would need more data about the percentage of people using bicycles — and how an increase might ease traffic — before making infrastructure investments and setting goals around multimodal transportation.

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Wamboldt said he would advocate for creating more housing for middle incomes, targeting essential workers like teachers, hospital workers and firefighters.

He believes housing production could be boosted by restructuring the city’s permitting system to create two pathways for applicants: a fast-track for developers who “follow through on what they say they’re going to do” and a slow line for those whose past projects haven’t come to fruition.

“I think it’s unfair for developers who are doing a better job to be penalized along with developers who are gumming up the system,” he said. “That would be one way to move things a little bit more freely and also incentivize good behavior with our developers.”

On homelessness, Wamboldt said he would support programs that provide one-on-one care and case work rather than general survival resources to the entire unsheltered population.

Unlike other candidates, Wamboldt said he would address Bend’s health care system if elected. He said St. Charles Health System has too tight a grip on the local system and said he would be in favor of the City Council setting up tax incentives for a new health care system to come into town and provide a “healthy competition” for St. Charles.