My Experience

• Wasco County 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update — Supported the update of Wasco County's long-range comprehensive plan, contributing to one of the most foundational planning documents a jurisdiction produces. Gained hands-on experience navigating the policy, public engagement, and interagency coordination that a county-scale comp plan demands.

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• La Pine 2045 Vision — City of La Pine Authored the vision framework for the La Pine 2045 Comprehensive Plan Update, establishing the goals and priorities that would guide the full plan. Setting the vision is the work that everything else builds on, get it wrong and the plan drifts; get it right and the community has a document they actually believe in.

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• La Pine 2045 Comprehensive Plan Update — Full comprehensive plan update coordinating multiple stakeholder agencies, community engagement workshops, and delivered a completed plan within 18 months with zero public testimony in opposition.

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• Destination Resort Application — Processed a destination resort application with Crook County under one of the more complex and politically sensitive land use frameworks in Oregon state law. Destination resorts require careful navigation of statewide planning goals, siting criteria, and competing community interests. 

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• Utility Scale Solar, Wind, and BESS Storage Permitting — Served as lead reviewer with both Wasco County and Crook County on some of the most complex renewable energy projects across resource-zoned agricultural lands. Coordinated interagency review with ODOE, DSL, ODOT, and irrigation districts, balancing renewable energy goals with farm and forest land protections. Also led ordinance updates to address emerging solar siting policy statewide.

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• Solar LUBA Appeal & Agency Mediation — Processed utility-scale solar applications that advanced to the Land Use Board of Appeals, mediating competing interests between the applicant and Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife.

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• Development Code Revisions and Modernization — Led multiple updates to land division codes, administrative procedure codes, and a range of housekeeping amendments to keep local regulations current, defensible, and functional.

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• Land Use Application Fee Schedule Analysis — Conducted multiple fee schedule analysis to evaluate whether application fees were appropriately calibrated to the actual cost of processing land use permits. This kind of internal work directly affects a department's financial sustainability and workload equity, and most jurisdictions don't do it often enough.

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• Planning Commission Service & Leadership — Served three years on the City of The Dalles Planning Commission, including one year as Chair. Sitting on the other side of the dais builds a perspective most planners never get, understanding how commissioners weigh evidence, what makes a staff report persuasive, and how quasi-judicial proceedings actually function from a decision-maker's seat. That experience directly sharpens the quality of work I bring to every application I process.

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• Staff Report Templates — Developed plug-and-play staff report templates at both Crook County and the City of La Pine that standardized the review process and measurably shortened decision timelines. Good templates aren't just an efficiency tool, they improve consistency, reduce appeal exposure, and help less experienced staff produce defensible work faster. These are still in use today.

My career has taken me across some of Oregon's most beautiful, and also most regulated and carefully protected landscapes. That breadth of experience is exactly what I bring to every project.

At the county level, I've worked deep in Oregon's farm and forest protection framework, processing applications on Exclusive Farm Use and Forest zoned lands. In Wasco County, that work extended into the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, which is one of the most stringently regulated landscapes in the country, governed by a federal management plan, a bi-state commission, and a layer of overlay requirements that go well beyond standard Oregon land use law. Getting a project approved in the Gorge means knowing the rules and building a record that can survive scrutiny at every level.

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In Crook County, my work shifted to the high desert, processing utility-scale solar and battery energy storage applications across agricultural lands, coordinating with state agencies, irrigation districts, and wildlife interests to balance Oregon's renewable energy goals against its deep commitment to farm and forest preservation. These are projects full of regulatory complexity, where a misstep in the record can unravel months of work.

On the city side, my time at the City of La Pine gave me a different but equally demanding set of challenges. La Pine is a fast-growing community with real commercial development pressure, and managing that growth means balancing economic opportunity with the infrastructure, zoning, and long-range planning frameworks that keep a city functional for the long haul. I've overseen commercial entitlements, subdivision approvals, and a full comprehensive plan update, all while running a department and advising elected officials on decisions that shape the community for decades.

Across all of these landscapes, I've learned that expertise, balance, and purpose are necessary to succeed. 

• Oregon State University: Bachelor's of Science in Natural Resources (Urban Land Use Planning & GIS) - 2017

• AICP Accreditation - 2020

• OAPA Excellence in Planning Award: Small Jurisdiction - 2025