City Council Entrance Interview: Sarah Silkie

Pronouns: She/they

Seeks to represent: District 4 (Westside, inner Southeast)

Job: Civil engineer for the City of Portland

Fun fact: Her middle name is Strawberry.

For almost 12 years Sarah Silkie has worked for the Portland Water Bureau, first as an environmental specialist and now as an engineer. But now she’s taking the leap to try to be the management she wished she had.

“It’s really frustrating that many politicians don’t seem to realize that most of the actual work that is done by the city is done by employees, and if you don’t have good management, you’re not going to have good performance,” she tells WW.

Silkie, 50, grew up in Portland, and now after getting a master’s and Ph.D. in environmental engineering from University of California, Berkeley, she’s back in the city to raise her kids.

“As a working mom, I know how to get stuff done because I don’t have time not to,” she says. “I want to pour that energy into making the whole city better.”

Silkie has received $40,000 in matched funds through the Small Donor Elections program. In total, her campaign has raised almost $57,000. She’s been endorsed by LiUNA 483, Portland Association of Teachers, Basic Rights PAC, and the Street Trust Action Fund.

We spoke to Silkie about her campaign. Questions and answers have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

WW: What are your top three priorities if elected?

Sarah Silkie: My first priority is climate change—addressing and implementing the plan that we have. My second priority is good governance, fiscal responsibility and transparency, making the budget available and clear to people. It’s over 500 pages right now, and nobody can understand it. And then third, housing and safety.

Beyond policing, what measures would you take to improve public safety in Portland neighborhoods?

I’d start by funding Portland Street Response 24/7 and citywide. We need to get people off the streets and into shelters, treatment and homes. As long as we have people living and dying on our streets, it’s not going to feel safe. The city can work on treating it like the emergency that it is.

How would you support local businesses and foster economic growth in Portland?

I have been working downtown for the past five years, coming in person multiple times a week throughout the pandemic. It has gotten a lot better. Now we need to refocus on the fundamentals of the new reality, with hybrid work and remote work being a new reality for many people. We need to have a public conversation about what we want our urban core to look like. What do we want to replace those dead office spaces? I would go for more housing downtown. There are still many lots and buildings that are ripe for investment.

What aspects of the city’s current approach to drug use and overdose deaths do you support, and what would you change?

I would start with expanding Portland Street Response to 24/7 and give them the authority they need to be effective, including transporting people. We also need to have shelter available on demand, and we need to get the county to have treatment available on demand. You can’t expect people to get sober when they’re living on the street, and you can’t expect people to get sober when there’s no treatment available in those few minutes when they are ready for treatment.

We should consider merging the county and the city governments. As long as somebody else is theoretically responsible for it and not doing it, then it’s going to be broken.

Do you support the city staying in the Joint Office of Homeless Services? What’s your plan to address homelessness?

For the time being, the city should stay in the Joint Office of Homeless Services until the new council is in and we can negotiate.

We need to end unsheltered homelessness. The goal is something with a door that you can close at night so that you know you’re safe. I certainly wouldn’t put people in jail until there’s the option of a room with a door that closes at night. It doesn’t have to be a whole apartment, but it should be somewhere they feel safe to sleep and can leave their stuff during the day, whether we convert office space downtown or we make more tiny home villages and neighborhoods throughout the city.

Which current City Council member do you and your policies most align with?

I’m ready for a fresh slate. I respect the people on the current City Council. They’ve had to grapple with a lot of challenging issues, but I really feel like we have a mandate for change right now.

How do you feel about the new structure of city government and ranked-choice voting?

I think it’s really great. When I voted for a charter reform, I just wanted a city administrator. I’ve worked for the city for a long time, and we desperately need a city administrator. The commissioner form of government does not work. I was a little skeptical about the multimember district thing, but the more I’ve learned about it, the more it seems like a really ingenious proposal.

How do you want police to respond to riots if Trump wins in November?

I hope it’s not just the police. If there are protests in the streets, I’ll probably be out there with them, and if it’s safe enough, I want my whole family to join me. Nonviolent, nondestructive and even non-permitted protests should be allowed. I’m optimistic that Harris will win. I think we need more women in elected office, don’t you think? We should be thinking about, what if we are prepared with public events that encourage people to express themselves and in a nonviolent way—think, music and arts? For a big festival, you would have medical people available and you would have a police presence as a safety thing, not in riot gear but, like, we’ve got a lot of people out and we’re ready to have a lot of people out.

See the other Portland City Council Candidates here!