Catherine Childress runs for city council

As one of four candidates for the three open city council seats on November 6, Catherine Childress has a clear vision of what she believes will be good for the council: "The city council is a business, and it theoretically should run like a business. But it does not run like a business."

Childress gained her business perspective from a 25-year career at Sprint in Georgia, culminating as vice-president in key account sales. Raised in the Atlanta area as the daughter of a railroad engineer, Catherine spent the first 12 years of her career as a high school English and Spanish teacher.

She then joined Sprint as an application engineer, assigned to revise installation manuals. To give her practical experience, her boss had her spending time literally in the trenches.

"I can splice telephone cable to this day," said Childress.

Childress believes that her experience building consensus between the various Sprint operations to deliver a single viable end-product that met her customer's specific need will serve her well in bringing the city council to a business perspective.

"There is dysfunction (in the council) because their goals are different," said Childress. "It is hard to get decisions made when people are responding emotionally rather than pragmatically. With my experience in working with diverse groups of people I would get us to agree up-front what our role and responsibilities are.

"I tend to be organized, and I have a business mindset. I operate on facts and consensus-building. When you don't build a team that trusts each other and works together, you will never be successful. It is not just consensus with the councilors; it includes the city employees and the community."

When asked why she would pursue a seat on the council, Childress said, "I'm at a point in my life where I have the time to get involved. My husband Dave and I love living here. I support the arts, music and sports. I support appropriate business growth that will bring in family-wage jobs. I want to give our kids a place to come back to work and raise their families."

Childress shared her views on economic development.

"I'm a proponent for business opportunities that make sense for us here in Sisters," Childress continued. "From what I know in my background, there have to be some companies for whom Sisters is the perfect place to be. Most of those companies don't start big. We need to target a couple of those (companies) to work on. They are looking for places to live that support their lifestyle."

Speaking to the current economic development efforts, Childress said, "We need to nail this economic development plan. What are we going to do? We can't have one person over here and another group over there. We need to get this targeting decision made. I think we are going to get there by trying to build some kind of cohesiveness between the different entities involved."

In the 1990s Childress and her husband bought a vacation home in Yachats, and in 2002 they moved into that home. Catherine retired from Sprint a year later, and promptly began a stint as a substitute teacher at a variety of coast schools. They moved to their home in the Timber Creek subdivision in Sisters in 2006.

Since arriving in Sisters, Childress has been teaching knitting at Stitchin' Post, and she has gotten involved in the homeowners association at Timber Creek, serving as secretary on the board of directors with councilor David Asson. When Timber Creek was building their bridge, Childress was chairman of the traffic committee. She spent a lot of time with city hall staff on the bridge project.

"The interface I had with the city staff at that time was very professional," she said.

Catherine and Dave have one daughter and two granddaughters. Catherine also enjoys singing with the Sisters High Desert Chorale.