Mayor of Siletz Wins Award for Leadership – an interview with Will Worman

by Brian Bahouth

The Siletz river all but encircles the mile-square City of Siletz, population roughly 1,200. On the day I visited  Mayor Will Worman, the area next to City Hall was crowded with adults and children and bounce houses and a variety of attractions for the National Night Out. The Mayor waited for me in a darkened City Council chambers. I asked him if he aspired to be mayor.

“I had no desire, no didn’t even cross my mind,” Worman said. “I got frustrated with drugs and alcohol, or not alcohol as much, but the drug related activities that were going on in our town. We were having to scour the different fields in town to make sure there was no needles before we could have baseball games and things like that. And it was frustrating. And there was a lot of theft and just a lot of bad behavior going on in town, and myself and a group of my family and friends just, we’d had enough, so we created a neighborhood watch and got pretty aggressive about trying to chase the nastiness out of town.

“And as we kind of evolved with it, we learned that really, you know, the idea is to try and help as many people as you can. Kind of our motto in Siletz has been, if you’re in a bad way and you want help, we’re here. If you’re in a bad way and you want to drag other people down, we’re not here for you. It’s time for you to go. So that’s where we kind of made our stand with the neighborhood watch.

“Somewhere in the midst of all that, Mayor Robinson decided he was not going to run for mayor again, and he showed up one day and said, I need to talk to you. I’d like you to run for mayor. And I laughed and said, not going to happen. And then a couple days later, he talked with me again. And I was like, okay, I’ll think about it, and then talked to my family and decided, okay, I’m gonna give it a try. Why not? And I got into got into the office, started seeing and making some changes right away, and started seeing people rally and want to make things better in town. Seven years later, here we are still doing it.”

The Oregon Mayors Association recently awarded  Worman with the Mayors Leadership Award for small cities. Honorees are selected based on outstanding leadership that impacts not just their own city but the broader Oregon municipal community. The award criteria include demonstrated involvement in civic affairs, strong intergovernmental relations, fostering productive relationships with city councils and staff, and supporting fellow mayors’ leadership growth. According to the Association, it’s one of highest awards a mayor can get.

When elected 7 years ago, Worman was intent to refurbish the city’s wastewater plant and improve relations with the nearby Confederated Tribe of the Siletz Indians. There was an agreement between the tribe and the city for sewer services, but the city needed the tribe to help pay for what ultimately became an $11 million dollar project.

Worman described a variety of complicating factors that could have clouded the cost sharing negotiations. Perhaps the biggest hurdle was an existing agreement that was unfair.

“When we sat down and really talked about the project, tried to kind of drill into why it was such a contentious thing, and really why it was contentious is because the old water and sewer agreement was signed back in the ‘80s, and it was one of those things where it wasn’t a real, even though there’s parts of it were a good deal, some of it wasn’t such a great deal for the tribe, and they felt like they kind of felt like they signed the original agreement in duress, and that it was so old and they hadn’t even come back to talk about it again, that there was, there had to be a better way, more of a team effort. So after listening, and, you know, going through that first year and a half of trying to understand it all and listen to all the lawyer stuff and all the things that come out.

“Finally, we just sat down and said, listen as a team, both the tribe and the city. Let’s just take this old agreement, throw it out, write something new that we all participate in, and agree on, sign it, and get moving down the road. Now that sounds a lot easier than it was. It was the first time it was written. It didn’t make a lot of sense. A lot of lawyer words and stuff. Went through several, several revisions of it. Finally, we all came to a to a point where we felt like, okay, this, this is a document that we can all agree to. It’s good for the city. It’s good for the tribe. Pulls us together. A year ago, we got the document signed, ratified it, and now we’re moving down the road.

“Since then, some pretty amazing things happened. The tribe, they, their proportionate share was around $3 million dollars-ish, and then our share was about $4.5 million. And unfortunately, because it took so long to get there, the project went from a five, $6 million project to an $11 million project. I mean, that’s just everything has just skyrocketed quickly. So the, I believe it’s the Bureau of Indian Affairs, maybe the wrong agency, but anyways, another level of tribal affairs came in and started working with us to try and help the tribe get some of the money so they didn’t have to pull it directly out of coffers.

“And in the end, the instead of the around $3 million that we were expecting to get from that project, we’re getting more like five and a half or $6 million because they decided that there’s lots of homes in the city of Siletz that aren’t on tribal property, but they’re still tribal members, and they wanted proportionately to cover everyone, so they figured out what that was going to be, and that’s the price tag they’re bringing to the table. It’s been great.

“The relationship is better, and that was really my main goal when I first became mayor, other than building things and making town more exciting and providing some stuff for our community, mostly our kids and our older folks. I wanted to really hone in on why the relationship with the tribe was bad, and how do we get past that.”

Mayor Worman said the essential factor for success was that the city and the tribe were both willing to look forward, beyond past differences.

“I tried not to concentrate too much on the why it wasn’t good from the past and more of, okay, I know there’s lots of things from the past. Let’s talk about what we’re gonna do out here. Where are we headed? So we really didn’t, neither side really harped on or concentrated on the past. We just said, ‘hey, things haven’t been good, but how do we get there?’

“So we just started working on how to get there. Don’t care about what happened in the past. I mean, I do to a degree, but mostly I care about, we’re all in this one-mile-by-one-mile town together. How do we get down the road together and have great things for everybody, because we all need great things. We deserve them as much as any other town.”

A list of past and current municipal projects flows from Worman with an ease and level of detail known only to those intimately involved in the work. The Mayor has been a local basketball and football coach for three decades and has the intensity and focus of purpose as you’d expect from a competitive coach.

When the award was presented to Worman recently in City Council chambers in Siletz, the Mayor of Toledo, Rod Cross, read the citation aloud and hugged Worman.

State Representative David Gomberg was there and praised Worman’s many abilities, to include his knack for being effectively annoying and tenacious.

Lincoln County Commissioner Casey Miller also spoke at the award ceremony and said Mayor Worman was a little intimidating until he got to know him as a catalyst for getting things done.

“It’s cool because, you know, I’ve locked horns with with Representative Gomberg a couple times. You know, he’s come, tried to help. I wanted things to go faster, because, like I said, I’m a high energy guy, and I’m just going to tell you how I feel, and if I think that you’re not doing something, I’m going to tell you, and he and I have had some moments, but at the end of the day, we both have the same goal, and that is to make things better.

“And once we learned each other, we’ve got a good relationship. Matter of fact, he texted me just a little bit ago and said, ‘Hey, Mayor, I’m going to do my best to get out to Siletz today and come find you.’

“Commissioner Miller, I’ve known Casey for a lot of years. When he first became commissioner, I supported him, and with that, my support comes with an expectation of work hard. I don’t just mean do what I want, because that’s not realistic or fair, but work hard and be honest and tell me if I’m out of line or if I’m, my idea is crazy. It’s fine. You can tell me you’ve lost your mind, go away, but at least come to me with something.

“We talked about some cleaning up around our city, getting some of the properties cleaned up. We hired a code enforcement officer. We created a court system for Siletz, something that hasn’t been here for a very long time. Just trying to get things clean and some of the unmanaged properties managed, and get people to respect their neighbor. You know, my place is nice. You’ve got things piled up 20 feet high, and the next place is nice. Let’s fix that.

“I came to Casey with some of those problems. Some of those problems are just outside of Siletz, but there’s still a Siletz problem, because properties drain into our river. People see those properties as they’re coming into town. Let’s make it right.

“And I explained it to him, and he started working on it, but not at the pace that I wanted. So I took pictures, built a PowerPoint, sent it to him again, and said, ‘No. I said, let’s go. I meant as in yesterday, not next month.’ So I imagine that can be a little intimidating, but that’s how I am.”

Taking too much credit for accomplishments under his tenure as mayor doesn’t seem to sit well with Worman. He said the people of Siletz are generous and community minded. Worman’s staff nominated him for the award.

“From a standpoint of sitting behind the mayor’s seat looking at my community. We have the best people. People show up to help with things. We have these wonderful events. I don’t really have to go beat the doors down and look for volunteers. People just show up. It’s just kind of how Siletz has always been.

“I coached basketball here for 30 years. I coached football here for 20 years, and I’ve never had a shortage of people showing up to help with all the things that we need, whether it’s getting the money to get things done or just getting the bodies in seats to help with things.

“This is a great place to be. It’s a great place to raise kids. You’ve got this beautiful river, got this wonderful town. It’s small, and it has the small next door neighbor feel, which I love, even as we’re growing things and planting trees and trying to make the place just look prettier and fill the excitement in people a little bit more, it still has that, keeps that same small feel.

“And  when you go out there and look at the festival today, it’s going to be absolutely jam packed with kids and adults running around having fun, and that’s how it should be at summertime. Why aren’t we all out there having fun? And in Siletz, you see a lot of it.”

While I took a few photos, Worman waded into the crowd of parents and children gathered for the National Night Out event. With the ease of familiarity, he shook hands and spoke with the kids and parents he encountered and seemed to know.