Eugene City Council Ward 3 | John Barofsky vs. Jennifer Smith

To see how candidates answered identical questions from Lookout, click here.

A local business owner and a University of Oregon union leader will face off in the May 19 primary for Eugene City Council’s Ward 3 seat, the only council contest without an incumbent.

John Barofsky, an owner of Italian restaurant Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria, is running against Jennifer Smith, the president of the union that represents UO classified staff, after five-term Councilor Alan Zelenka decided against running for reelection earlier this year. 

The winner of the race will represent an east-central slice of Eugene that includes the UO campus and the Fairmount, Laurel Hill and South University neighborhoods. Ward 3 is bounded roughly by the Willamette River to the north, Eugene city limits to the east, parts of East 30th Avenue to the south, and portions of High Street and Hilyard to the west.

The eight-member council is Eugene’s representative legislative body, responsible for proposing and passing local laws, setting policy and hiring the city manager, who runs day-to-day operations and administration across City Hall at the council’s direction. 

Councilors also have the final say on Eugene’s $1.9 billion two-year budget proposed by the city manager, and appoint members to city committees, boards and commissions. The city pays councilors about $22,000 per year. 

Eugene city councilors are elected to four-year terms by residents of their ward, with half the seats on the ballot every two years. There are no term limits. 

In the 2022 election, nearly 2,600 voters in Ward 3 returned ballots, but 934 of them — more than a third — skipped the council race. About 95% of those who did voted for Zelenka, who ran unopposed. 

With two fresh faces competing for the seat, marking the first contested race in the ward since 2018, dynamics are likely to shift this year. 

Asked about their respective challengers, Barofsky said he didn’t know Smith and had to Google her when she filed to run against him; Smith, who has been endorsed by Zelenka, countered that Barofsky may be beholden to big business due to his industry ties. 

Here’s what Lookout Eugene-Springfield learned about the candidates for Eugene City Council Ward 3: 

John Barofsky

Age: 64

Residence: Fairmount neighborhood

Education: Graduate of East Grand Rapids High School; attended Eastern Michigan University and Lane Community College

Occupation: Partner of Beppe & Gianni’s Trattoria

Prior elected experience: Fairmount Neighborhood Association Board of Directors; Eugene Water & Electric Board commissioner for Wards 2 & 3; Eugene Budget Committee; Eugene Planning Commission; Community Safety Payroll Tax Citizens Advisory Board; Affordable Housing Trust Fund Advisory Committee; Street Repair Review Panel

Family status: Lives with his wife, Conni

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For John Barofsky, all roads lead back to the restaurant.

He worked for more than a decade at Italian restaurant Mazzi’s before he and his business partner “risked everything” to open Beppe and Gianni’s on East 19th Avenue almost 30 years ago. 

It was the restaurant where he met his wife of 25 years. It was the restaurant that led him to move to the Fairmount neighborhood. And indirectly, it was the restaurant that propelled him into local politics — first through his neighborhood association, followed by service on city commissions, panels, committees, and, most recently, the Eugene Water & Electric Board of Commissioners. 

Whenever he considered a run for Eugene City Council, the restaurant was the one thing holding him back. (When people ate at Beppe & Gianni’s, he wanted them talking about “pasta, not parking,” he said.) But this year, he said he saw a lack of business-driven perspectives on the council and changed his mind. 

“The voice that I want to bring is the voice of somebody who has run a small business, written a paycheck, as opposed to signing the back of a paycheck,” Barofsky said. “That’s a voice that we haven’t seen on the City Council in a long time.”

Barofsky says his experience working at and owning a restaurant, mixed with his legislative knowledge from service on elected bodies, give him an informed and business-savvy approach to decisionmaking. His campaign priorities: housing stability and affordability, responsible use of public dollars, and public safety and quality of life. 

He’s received thousands of dollars in campaign donations from notable local businessmen like developers Dan Neal and Brian Obie, executive Randy Pape and timberlands owner Dan Giustina, as well as the PAC launched by the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce, which he led for two years as president. 

Barofsky said his time on Eugene’s Budget Committee taught him the ins and outs of local government finance, especially how to maneuver within a budget constrained by earmarked funding.

He said he’d approach bridging the city’s multimillion budget gap “holistically,” examining what cuts would have the least impact on residents, how existing services could be maintained at a lesser extent, and the possibility of offloading city services to other agencies. 

Barofsky was supportive of last year’s proposed fire fee, which would have generated $10 million in annual revenue but failed to advance after a successful opposition campaign led by the chamber. The experience taught Barofsky the importance of community “buy-in” when proposing new taxes or fees, he said. 

“If revenue is one of the pieces of the conversation that we have to fill a budget deficit, what I would really lean into is making sure that it’s broad and community-based before it’s presented,” he said.

Barofsky said he’d use his understanding of land use laws to inform residents about the roles that the state and city play in housing, like with infill for middle housing, and determine “where policies could be tweaked” to preserve neighborhood character.

“This is how we got here, now we’re starting to see the implications of how it’s playing out,” Barofsky said. “Are there ways for us to work within that system to adjust some of the issues that we are seeing once it’s been materialized?”

He said he plans to leverage existing development incentives in Eugene, like urban renewal and Multi Unit Property Tax Exemptions, and he floated crafting a policy to regulate short-term rentals like Airbnbs after hearing neighbors’ concerns that they reduce housing availability and affordability near campus. 

The council should have strong boundaries between policy and operations, Barofsky said. On public safety, he said he plans to “lean on” the perspectives of police and fire professionals, then seek input from communities most affected by a proposed change. 

“Let them come to us and say, ‘This policy may help us achieve the goals of public safety in all of our realm,’ have a good discussion about that with my other councilors, and form good policy that helps them to achieve what they’re trying to do,” Barofsky said.

Barofsky said the council made the “correct decision” in moving to end the city’s contractual relationship with Flock Safety for license plate reader cameras, though he said there are “some good things” about the technology’s crime-fighting ability. 

In the future, the city manager and police chief should give the council a heads up about decisions that could overlap with policy, he added.

Outside of his campaign, Barofsky likes to tinker on old cars. A red 1957 Fiat pickup truck is his current pet project. When the restaurant is closed, he and his wife go on long drives across Oregon.

Barofsky is also 40 years sober; when he sees people struggling with addiction in Eugene, he said he thinks of what could have happened to him had he not gotten clean.

“That part of me, it lives deep,” he said. “I don’t put it out there to everybody, but it’s a part of the core of who I am.”

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Jennifer Smith

Age: 54

Residence: Fairmount neighborhood

Education: Received master’s degree in urban planning from University of California Los Angeles and a master’s degree in public administration from University of Oregon. 

Occupation: Project coordinator at UO’s Labor Education and Research Center

Prior elected experience: Steward & President of SEIU 503 Local 085; Walkable Eugene Citizen Action Network; United for Immigrant Justice in Lane County; City of Eugene’s Active Transportation Committee; Mayor of Eugene’s Permanent Shelter Task Force; Lane Council of Government’s Metropolitan Policy Organization Advisory Committee; Lane Transit District’s Budget Committee; State of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission

Family status: Husband and 1 adult child

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Jennifer Smith’s road to this race began at the bargaining table.

After growing up in Ward 3, attending Edison Elementary and South Eugene High School, she left Eugene for college in California, later working as a transportation planner for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 

She returned to Eugene in the early 2000s to raise her family — “a no-brainer decision” — and took a project coordinator job at the University of Oregon’s Labor Education Research Center, a position she still holds today.

There, Smith said, she found another calling: representing the nearly 1,800 classified staff who keep the university running, from custodians to library workers, through SEIU 503 Local 085. 

She began in a low-level leadership role on the union’s Contract Action Team while she juggled raising her son before moving into bigger roles of secretary, vice president, steward, and for the past two years, union president. 

Representing UO’s lowest-wage workers showed Smith how kitchen-table issues, like rising costs of living coupled with Eugene’s housing shortage, have made the city less livable, she said. 

That’s why, when she realized just before the candidate filing deadline that Zelenka was not running for reelection and Barofsky was set to run unopposed, she decided to launch a challenge with a campaign centered on working families. 

“People deserve to have that,” she said. “When they’re hearing council talking about things, things can be kind of high level. But like, how does this affect us, what are our expectations of this policy and how it’s going to affect the fine-grain operation of our lives?”

Smith said her work on the council would be an extension of the union responsibilities that she does best: diving deep into problems that employees and neighbors are facing, determining who else is affected, and brainstorming how issues can be remedied. Her campaign priorities: affordability, climate action and human rights. 

Direct engagement with communities on the ground, not just quantitative data, would anchor her decisions, she said.

“The knowledge is there,” she said. “It’s pulling in a lot of community voices and people who are experiencing things day to day.”

Several unions and labor leaders, including chapters representing faculty, sheet metal workers and carpenters, have endorsed Smith. (Barofsky has been endorsed by IAFF Local 851, the union representing county firefighters, EMTs and paramedics, and UA Local 290 Plumbers & Steamfitters.)  

On housing, Smith said she wants more city oversight of publicly funded development, particularly student housing projects backed by out-of-state stakeholders, to ensure high-quality construction and fair rent prices. 

She supports bolstered tenant protections, like ending no-cause evictions and passing a Eugene Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, which she sees as the first step to preventing people from slipping into homelessness. Smith also said she’d back a rental vacancy tax.

“We need to make it possible for developers to build some of these units,” Smith said. “We need to also have a say in how these are presented on the market.”

When it comes to budget decision-making, which she said would be the hardest part of the job, Smith said she’d prioritize protecting social services like libraries, parks and recreation, and crisis response.

“Workers are very frequently the scapegoat,” Smith said. “We’re often the first expendable element on a budget, and I kind of reject that.”

Smith, a cyclist and a transportation planner by trade, said she’d fight for walkable neighborhoods, increased public transit and more protected bike lanes — one piece of her larger focus on climate. 

She hopes to work with community partners to make progress on Eugene’s environmental goals, like halving the city’s use of fossil fuels by 2030, and supports investing in community solar panels and storage. 

“Even though right now the federal regime is not open to a lot of innovation in this space, we can still keep working on these policies and build out these projects that we can apply here,” Smith said. 

For Smith, the third branch of her campaign — fighting fascism — looks like protecting and affirming the rights of Eugene’s immigrants, LGBTQ+ community, and unhoused population. 

She said she’d use her office as a bully pulpit for amplifying those values given City Council’s limited power over the federal government. 

Smith also opposes fencing on any city property around the federal building, and said she is “suspicious” of license plate reader cameras and the overall growth of the “surveillance state,” but is open to hearing all policy angles for the technology. 

“All we can do is, on the local level is keep having a bulwark against the overreach,” Smith said. 

In her free time, Smith is an “avid reader” of science fiction. (She said she has been in the same science fiction book group since 2007.) In the spring and summer, Smith said she enjoys container gardening and going on long walks through the ward with her husband.

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Candidate questionnaires

Candidates provided answers in their own words to questions from Lookout Eugene-Springfield. Our questions are in bold, followed by their responses.

What in your background would make you the best councilor for your race?

Barofsky: For more than 20 years I have been volunteering in local civic affairs, starting with 23 years on the Fairmount Neighbors board. I also served on the Eugene Planning Commission, Eugene Budget Committee, and I currently serve as an EWEB Commissioner. Each experience has taught me a lot about how local government works and has given me insights I wouldn’t have otherwise. I currently sit on advisory groups in the areas of housing, street repair and public safety that also mirror some of the top issues I believe are facing our community. I also am a 28-year small business owner in the neighborhood, which not only brings me closer to my neighbors but also gives me the benefit of that small business experience – navigating tough times like during a recession or Covid, hiring and retaining talented people, complying with numerous regulations, paying property taxes, providing a service to the public. It’s a perspective that isn’t common for the Eugene City Council.

Smith: I have a lifetime of experience bringing diverse perspectives together to achieve common goals. As part of the two Masters degrees I obtained, I took significant coursework in conflict and dispute resolution, planning, and administration. Additionally, I have served as an elected steward for almost ten years, and am currently the union president of SEIU 503 Local 085, representing nearly 1,800 classified employees at the University of Oregon. In these roles, I have honed my ability to work with a wide range of people in order to build consensus, and to find solutions for a range of issues facing union members. I also have educational and real-world experience in policy analysis and in community outreach having worked professionally as a long-range transportation planner and as a project coordinator. In this work, I value communication, inclusive process, and seeking consensus. I have served as chair of many of the committees I have served on – committees at the community (Walkable Eugene Citizen Action Network; United for Immigrant Justice in Lane County) and city level (City of Eugene’s Active Transportation Committee; Mayor of Eugene’s Permanent Shelter Task Force), for the county (Lane Council of Government’s Metropolitan Policy Organization Advisory Committee), transit district (LTD’s Budget Committee), and for the state (State of Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission). I regularly represent labor interests in productive meetings with management. Beyond process experience, I have been a long-time resident of Eugene but also have perspective from living in other places. I see with clear eyes what we do well in Eugene, and what we can improve on. I have been a lifelong progressive advocate for transportation and housing options, for working people and democratic action, and for protecting our most vulnerable neighbors and would bring these values, experience, and skills to the council. Above everything else, I believe the thing that best qualifies me to represent Ward 3 at City Council is how deeply I care about this community and my neighbors. I have spent my life fighting for the progressive values that our Ward shares and I’m ready to bring that energy to City Council.

What would your top three goals be if elected and how would you accomplish them?

Barofsky: My priorities focus on housing affordability and stability, the city’s budget situation (financial stability), and public safety/quality of life. I’ve been working with Mayor Knudson on the Housing Trust and to date we have created 400 new units of affordable housing. That work continues. The city’s budget challenges are longstanding, going back to my time on the Budget Committee. I don’t believe we can tax our way out of the structural budget problem that we have, although new revenues are something we have to consider (and have implemented through the stormwater fee and community safety payroll tax). We can’t keep kicking the can down the road and expecting future councils to solve the problem. We owe it to the next generation to align our income and our expenses. We can do that through collaborations, thoughtful prioritization (when everything is a priority, nothing is) and growing the economic pie. It’s this last point – growing our economic base – where I think I am uniquely positioned to make a measurable difference, by bringing together diverse constituencies to find common ground that leads to greater prosperity and greater opportunity for our children so they can remain in Eugene and make a living here.

Smith: I am running on a three pronged platform of expanding affordable housing, supporting bold climate action, and making the City of Eugene more affordable, while protecting our community’s high quality of life. In order to address the housing crisis, we have to do two things – build more housing and protect renters who are the most vulnerable to becoming unhoused. On the first point, we must increase our housing options by building more affordable housing. Eugene property is valuable and has become a market for corporate speculation. We need to create policies that incentivize the construction of homes for Eugene residents, and not new markets for equity funds. I support the actions the city is already working on: supporting efforts to preserve and construct affordable housing units, permanent supportive housing units, moderate-income housing units, and developing a housing anti-displacement action plan. We must continue to expand protections for renters in order to keep people housed, and help renters purchase their own homes. To do this, I would support stronger protections against no-cause evictions and the proposed Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act policy – expanding homeownership opportunities. Broadly, I am encouraged by and will help work towards focusing housing opportunities around designated climate friendly areas in our city – where neighborhood residents will be able to access most daily needs without needing a car. This meets our quality of life, climate, and affordability goals. We need to address our climate resiliency goals and action plans. I support policies to expand energy efficiency programs for homes and buildings, construct community solar and storage to increase renewable energy and grid resilience, and continue our work on safe and convenient transportation options. City investments in climate and sustainability are job creators that will allow us to meet this moment and our community climate goals, and insulate us from energy shocks all while creating a more vibrant and livable city for ourselves and future generations. I am supportive of the Home Energy Score policy that is currently being considered by council, and am interested in partnering with EWEB to support the expansion of subsidies and incentives to upgrade home energy systems and reduce utility costs. Finally, we need to protect affordability and our quality of life in Eugene. Our city is a great place to live due to our public spaces, our city services, and our beautiful neighborhoods – which brings a high quality of life. Unfortunately, many of us are having a hard time accessing this quality of life due to the high cost of housing and transportation and a lack of living-wage jobs. After paying our living costs, many of us don’t have extra money to spend pursuing our interests. We rely on city parks and recreation, our library, and our infrastructure such as sidewalks and bike paths to enjoy our free time. We deserve both family-supporting wages and high quality public amenities now and for future generations. I will use my experience as a union leader on council to work toward growing our wages, creating good paying union jobs, and protecting our community benefits. Building strong coalitions is part of my day job and my passion. As a city councilor, I will continue to build broad and strong coalitions across our community to bring these ideas to reality.

What are the gaps and shortcomings in city services and how would you address them?

Barofsky: Eugene has been fortunate to have a strong and functioning city government that voters support by approving library and parks levies. I see a key part of the job as a city councilor is to preserve core services; it might be easy to promise new programs to fill perceived gaps but that requires honest and tough financial discussions. We do need to invest in housing, but we have to be smart in finding funding partners. I believe the long-term solution to our city’s budget challenge is growing the revenue base. I support the city’s preliminary decision to invest more in economic development, but it has to be done wisely. We need to support the businesses that are here. It is our small businesses that employ so many people and support so many families. We need to work with the private and public sectors to train the workforce we need, make sure we are treating businesses equitably so they can plan for the future, and protect the attributes that make Eugene a desirable place to live and work.

Smith: The City is currently unable to adequately resource our goals in addressing the mental health crisis, provide life-saving resources to our unhoused neighbors, and provide the proper level of non-law enforcement crisis response. Addressing systemic issues of this complexity and breadth require partnership between non-profits and city, county, state and federal governments to create long lasting solutions that can lead with permanent housing and social services rather than further criminalization. One of the major losses for our community is the closure of CAHOOTS, which has left a massive gap in community services. As a City Councilor, I will continue the work to pursue and support a CAHOOTS-like program for the city of Eugene. The work to address these life-long problems begins today, even with a federal government uninterested in supporting the most vulnerable amongst us. When our federal government realigns our collective resources toward our communities, and away from international war, we will be ready to grow our small but mighty programs into the scale they need to be to make transformative, systemic progress.

How would you work with other councilors and city staff to find solutions to common problems? Give us an example of a time you worked on a collaborative solution.

Barofsky: I firmly believe that the best decisions are arrived at through collaboration, which may take more time and patience but ultimately produces a better result. I will bring a collaborative style to City Council that relies on listening, learning, asking questions, being respectful, exploring options, and ongoing dialogue. While I bring a deep resumé of experience to the table, I know I don’t have all the answers. I have no partisan or political agenda – my only motivation is to do what’s in the best interests of Eugene and to serve the people of Ward 3 to the best of my ability. The Housing Trust is a great example of where I played a key role in bringing together diverse interests to agree on a plan to construct more affordable housing units – we have built 400 affordable units and the work is ongoing. As a Fairmount Neighbors board member, I have worked to bridge the town-gown divide and mitigate the effects of a growing university on our neighborhoods – parking and traffic issues surrounding the development of the Matthew Knight Arena are a good example.

Smith: When approaching a problem, I find that leading with my values and a commitment to consensus is the best approach. Information and perspective collection is the first step in
collaboration. I always begin working on an issue or conflict by engaging with curiosity about the underlying interests of stakeholders. I believe city staff, city councilors, and our engaged community have more in common than not. We all share a desire to create a Eugene that is vibrant, productive, and welcoming for everyone. While often we have different ideas on how to achieve this shared goal with resource constraints or differences in approach, through good faith conversations and a willingness to compromise, I believe we can find solutions that work for everyone in our City. When I am negotiating with management at the University of Oregon in my role as President of SEIU 503 Local 085, I know that our shared goal is to best serve our state and our students. I have worked diligently and respectfully to effectively use my seat at the table to create a workplace that has achieved wage growth and benefits protection for my members, while achieving our common goals with management. By leading with values and commitment to consensus, I have led the union through multiple rounds of sometimes difficult contract negotiations. These experiences and skills I bring make me uniquely qualified to lead Eugene as the next Ward 3 City Councilor.

How have recent actions by the federal government affected your goals and priorities, if at all?

Barofsky: As a lifelong Democrat, it has undoubtedly had a profound effect – we are
called to defend democratic principles we never dreamed we would need to defend that are
under attack by the very institutions we thought would protect us. It would have been
unfathomable only a few months ago. Actions by the current administration have been deeply disturbing to me and I believe to the vast majority of people in Ward 3. One doesn’t have to be directly affected to see how fundamentally wrong and undemocratic – and frankly unthinkable until now – these policies are. Vulnerable communities have become targets, and we see that playing out on our streets. I have been very proud of our mayor for standing up to federal overreach in standing up to ICE pulling people off the streets and jailing them, and I will stand with her and other councilors to continue to resist what I believe are illegal and immoral federal policies against our most vulnerable neighbors.

Smith: We cannot address all of our goals and priorities without external help. This is especially true for health care and crisis response, transportation infrastructure, and growing clean renewable energy outcomes. Sadly, our federal government’s priorities are not currently in alignment with Eugene’s priorities. Our federal government is slashing investments into social safety services, cutting massive programs that support many of the most important services in Eugene. I firmly believe that this abandonment of vulnerable communities is only temporary and the pendulum will swing back to values of community-building, inclusion, and looking forward with bold initiatives – values that we hold dear in Eugene. In the meantime, Eugene must step up and continue to do what we do best: experiment, engage, and prepare our ideas for growing to scale when resources become available. Time and again, we are shown that all communities are stronger when we work together. The Trump administration’s failure to lead has only strengthened my resolve to fight for Eugene’s progressive values at City Council, and to use the position to uplift the many issues facing our neighbors due to their violent attacks on immigrants, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and more.

Outside of any elected experience in your background (if any), what other experiences in life have prepared you for this role?

Barofsky: I started my professional career as a dishwasher. When I wasn’t washing dishes I was getting up early in the morning to bake bread at a local restaurant. From that experience, I worked my way up for 16 years before taking the leap to open my own restaurant with a partner and beginning a journey I wouldn’t have foreseen for myself. I want to make sure that upcoming generations have the same opportunity to realize their dreams. Perhaps the most singularly important experience that has prepared me for all
subsequent roles in my life, including my life in public service, is my decision 40 years ago to get and stay sober. It has given me a greater degree of compassion for people who struggle and the lived experience that guides me in everything I do. I never lose sight of the fact that my life could have gone in a very different direction. I am grateful for the support I received and hope I can be that support to others in their personal and professional life journeys.

Smith: In addition to my role as a union leader, my work on various boards and commissions and my job at the University of Oregon, I have had many other experiences in my lifetime living in Eugene. Even as a child, I was biking with my mother to the University of Oregon, I have walked to and from elementary school, I lived on my own during my junior and senior year of high school – working part-time jobs to pay for a rented room. I have been a homeowner, a walker, a biker, a bus rider and a car-driver, seeing our transportation systems from all aspects. I am in multi-generational co-housing with my father and my young adult child – who, like me, went through the 4J school system. I am tuned in to what it’s like to age in place, and what it’s like to be coming into adulthood in Eugene. I am community-focused and curious about the experiences of others and how to improve those experiences. In short, I believe the lifetime of experiences I have had living in Eugene and the relationships I have built from a variety of communities have prepared me to represent Ward 3 at City Council.