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Alisa Pyszka, president of Bridge Economic Development, will challenge Metro Council President Lynn Peterson next year.
Pyszka, 50, has held a variety of positions in the private and public sectors in planning and economic development since moving here from Kansas in 1996.
Most recently, she was the lead consultant on a five-year Comprehensive Regional Economic Development Strategic Plan produced for Greater Portland Inc. and Metro and released in November.
Pyszka says she’s observed an increasing fractiousness in the three-county Metro region. “In my work, I consult with cities across the West and in this region and I see how important strong leadership is,” Pyszka says. “I’m really concerned with what’s going on locally.”
A first-time candidate, Pyszka points to a contentious multibillion-dollar Metro transportation measure that voters rejected in 2020 as a catalyst for her decision to challenge Peterson, who won her seat in 2018. (Peterson previously served as secretary of the Washington Department of Transportation, transportation adviser to Gov. John Kitzhaber, and Clackamas County chair.)
“I think the transportation measure created real divisions in the community,” Pyszka says.
She wants to help Metro manage its increasingly broad portfolio of responsibilities. The agency, the nation’s only elected regional government, historically engaged in planning for land use, transportation and solid waste for Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties, in addition to running parks, spectator facilities and the Oregon Zoo and Oregon Convention Center.
Under Peterson’s leadership, however, Metro has raised its profile and become a major source of new money for local governments. The agency issued its first-ever regional housing bond ($653 million, 2018), a hefty green spaces measure ($475 million, 2019), and a massive 10-year homeless services measure ($2.5 billion, 2020).
Metro will pass most of that money along to local governments but, as the issuer of bonds, the agency has oversight responsibility.
Pyszka would like to use her project management skills to help make sure voters get their money’s worth—and get a better sense of the agency.
“It’s amazing how few people understand what Metro is or what it does,” she says. “It used to be all about the urban growth boundary and transportation planning, but now there’s a whole lot more.”