Two incumbents, two newcomers running for pair of Veneta City Council seats

Two incumbents, David Voltz and Alexa Benson, and two newcomers, Clint Case and Betsy Ingram, are running for the two open at-large seats on the Veneta City Council. Election Day is Nov. 3, and ballots will be mailed this week. Veneta city councilors serve four-year terms.

Here’s what the candidates had to say about running for the council.

David Voltz

Voltz, an electrician who maintains water and sewer systems for an automation company, moved to Veneta in 2019. He served three years on the Veneta Planning Commission before running for council in 2024, when he lost to incumbent candidates.

The council later appointed him to a seat on the council after a previous councilor vacated the position. He is now running for a full term.

Housing policy is a major focus for Voltz in the coming term. With the city limits and urban growth boundary aligned in Veneta, Voltz said the city has limited room to expand and must make better use of vacant spaces within the existing city. He favors using infill sites for connected, diverse housing rather than isolated subdivisions.

He wants the city to guide what gets built using incentives rather than restrictions, including tiered system development charges, preapproved designs for accessory dwelling units and faster permitting for small, accessible homes.

Voltz said the city’s charges for connecting a new house to water and sewer run roughly $35,000 to $40,000 regardless of home size.

The city’s 2026 fee schedule lists $29,406 in total system development charges for a single-family home between 1,001 and 2,999 square feet, though drainage charges vary with home size and paved area.

“I can have five bathrooms … and 10,000 square feet of lawn, and I’m still paying the same as if I’m in an 800-square-foot house,” he said.

He has participated in the city’s housing needs analysis, and he has pushed for consumption-based water and sewer rates and for notifying renters, not only property owners, about nearby development applications.

If budgets tighten, he said, he would protect public works over parks.

“Everybody drinks water,” he said.

Alexa Benson

After four years on the Veneta City Council, Benson, a retired emergency room nurse practitioner, is seeking reelection. She also sits on the parks board and runs Veneta Serves, a nonprofit that connects volunteers with other local nonprofits. She holds a doctorate in nursing and a bachelor’s degree in classical music.

Her top priority is bringing transitional housing to Veneta, where she describes small homes — roughly 8 feet by 12 feet — as a viable option.

She said the small units would likely be built by Team Oregon Build, an organization that gets young people involved in hands-on construction and manufacturing projects.

“It requires full wraparound services, and that means mental health, drug addiction counseling … criminal file assistance, so they can get back into work,” Benson said. “Giving them healthcare, getting them registered in the system, giving them an ID, giving them transportation to and from all of their appointments.”

Benson said, “I think we’re getting close (to having this transitional housing project started),” and cited that as one of the main reasons for running again this year.

Benson also represents rural Lane County on the county’s Poverty and Homelessness Board and is part of the Fern Ridge Advocates for the Unhoused.

“It’s a lot cheaper to help people this way than it is to just let them sit there in a swamp because law enforcement (officers) go there; the fire department’s always there,” Benson said.

She also wants to advance the city’s paths and trails master plan, and she said the council has signed an agreement with Homes for Good, Lane County’s housing agency, to explore developing a vacant lot on Broadway.

“Homes for Good has come in … we signed an MOU [memorandum of understanding] with them to help them develop this big plot of land that we have on our main drag. That’s an empty lot to potentially put in the commercial lower level with some maybe affordable housing on the upper levels,” Benson said.

Benson said she would also like the city to hire an event planner. She said events make people feel “they’ve got traditions in the city.”

On crime, Benson pointed to last year’s increase in the public safety fee, saying that it “kind of” addressed the issue.

“But there’s always crime everywhere, and it’s not the homeless people that are doing it. It’s the people who live in houses,” Benson said. “They just like to blame it on the homeless.”

Clint Case

Case, a purchasing manager at Stahlbush Island Farms in Corvallis, has lived in Veneta for nine years. He has a degree in economics, a Master of Business Administration degree and served three years on the city’s budget committee.

He said his bid for city councilor was more “about participating” than major reform.

“I think there’s a lot of complaining about the government and how things are done, but … wanting to take some action,” Case said. “Just interested in seeing what projects the city’s working on. I know they have a balanced budget.”

He cited his project and contract management experience to oversee the city’s large outsourced projects and called himself a centrist who’s focused on fiscal responsibility.

He also would like the city to designate proportionate spending on homelessness, pointing to Veneta’s small unhoused population and limited mental health resources, and pitched low-cost steps such as free bus passes to services in Eugene.

“At least from what I heard, it’s a very small homeless population,” Case said. “So I think the amount of spending to address the problem needs to be kind of commensurate with … what would be of impact.”

Case also was the only candidate to name an area where the city budget could be trimmed. He said Veneta could eventually spend less on its policing contract, citing little crime he has heard of.

“We could probably do with less. I don’t know how much,” Case said. “I haven’t heard of a lot of crime in Veneta.”

The Lane County Sheriff’s Office contract is $1.26 million for 2025-26, the largest expense in the city’s law enforcement fund, according to the city’s adopted budget. The budget also shows the council moved $25,000 from its Zumwalt Campground Fund to help close a funding gap in the contract.

Betsy Ingram

Ingram, a retired special education teacher and former adjunct professor, has lived in Veneta for four years after moving from Chico, California, following the Camp Fire that burned over nearby Paradise, California.

Ingram was named Alameda County Teacher of the Year in 2016. In Veneta, she sits on the parks board and helps coordinate the Blackberry bRamble bike ride.

Ingram said she wants “responsible growth” for Veneta. She cited the Veneta Comprehensive Plan, which says Veneta “is forecast to increase to 10,505 in the year 2035.” (The Population Research Center at Portland State University estimated Veneta’s population in 2025 at 5,300, up from 4,561 in 2010.)

She also said new development should include usable parks and space for schools, along with affordable options. She wants to work with the Oregon Department of Transportation on safety improvements to Highway 126.

She also wants to focus on a “vibrant downtown” that keeps visitors’ money in Veneta, rather than making the trip to Eugene. She pointed to the new Bolton Hill Sports Complex and the tournaments it will bring to Veneta, and said she would like there to be places for people who attend those tournaments to grab a bite to eat or shop in Veneta.

“If we’re bringing people to Veneta, we need that money to stay in Veneta,” Ingram said. “So we need to offer some business opportunities to people, especially locally owned businesses here, and make our main street, which is West [Broadway], make it vibrant.”

Additionally, a priority of Ingram’s is to reinstate the neighborhood watch program. She said she is currently working with Veneta Mayor Robbie McCoy to bring back a neighborhood watch that she said had been “vibrant or really active” but fell by the wayside.

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