Sue relaxes at home in Long Beach with rescue dogs José and Tosha.

Deep roots

No one would ever call Sue Svendsen, Long Beach’s newly seated mayor, a good ol’ boy, but she has deep roots in Pacific County. We spoke this weekend and I looked over several pics of the “old days” — one of her joy-riding with her brother and the Pioneer Motel manager circa 1963. Her great-grandmother Jessie Simmons was a superintendent in Pacific County and Grays Harbor; and her great grandfather, James Simmons, was the marshal of Pacific County. Her South Bend-born grandfather was a logger in North River where Sue’s mom grew up.

Sue’s experience, not only of beachy life but work in general, is broad and wide. She and husband Bill started the Peninsula Arts Center (PAC, peninsulaartscenter.org) around 2009 and have established it as one of the premier live music venues on the north coast. Before moving full-time to Long Beach six years ago, Sue held a variety of community jobs in the Vancouver Schools, at Parks and Recreation, and with disability services. She served on various nonprofit boards, as president of the Clark County Arts Council and chair of the Animal Control Advisory Board.

Her focus has always been on community building, whether it’s rescuing local four-leggeds (she and Bill have three doggos currently) or supporting music and the arts. Sue recently completed a beach-themed mural in Ocean Beach Hospital’s Ilwaco clinic; and both her own watercolors and her assistance at local galleries and for other arts projects is nearly legendary. (I’ve always marveled, “Has she cloned herself? There must be at least three of her.”)

Priorities for 2024

So bona fides out of the way, what does Mayor Svendsen hope to accomplish? Sue has always said that building a vibrant community starts with listening, and one of the first things she’s initiated is a listening segment in Long Beach city council meetings. “We should be able to talk openly in meetings with each other. I’d like us to have open-ended time to discuss the vision that the council has for the city and what they think are the most important issues. And I want to hear from our council members about what they want to learn in their own workshops.” (Some municipal funds are spent on learning sessions or workshops regarding finance, marketing, or other issues.)

Sue is also talking to every city employee “to get to know them, their jobs, and get their input and ideas.” It’s certainly important, as President Obama famously said, to “learn how to get stuff done,” but it’s also critical to take the time to converse about what that stuff should be.

As Sue says, “In our first meeting I asked each council member to introduce themselves and say a little about their interests and priorities. Everybody cares about housing, and some mention the possibility of cutting down on vacation rentals. Vacation rentals are necessary for the economy, which is not wrong, but there needs to be balance. We definitely need more housing for our workers. We already have a challenge for parking in the whole town, so how will we handle this? I don’t know yet. We may need to redraft some codes, and not only for mother-in-law units. We need to think about supporting long-term rentals. In the city, we are up to date on our building permits. But staffing at the county level has left them with a real backup. It would be good for us to prove that some code changes can work — then there might be more interest in this at the countywide level.”

Sue also brought up the Naselle Youth Camp, now sitting empty. She and others had a recent tour of the grounds and facilities.

“The Naselle Youth Camp is outside our authority, obviously, but it could be a prime place for housing our workers,” she said. “It’s 20 minutes away, so it probably isn’t suitable for low income housing — there’s no mass transit so it’s isolated. But there are approximately 20 apartments, and a couple two or three bedroom houses. It could be a drug treatment center or a nursing home. It would have to be brought up to code — it might need to be rewired or re-plumbed. I’m not sure how it would work unless there could be a revenue stream. We need to do more research.”

“And we may need to challenge some of our urban growth area (UGA) policies. There are a lot of requirements on the books. If we can find a way to do infill I’d be all for it, maybe for starter homes. The housing authority provides access to first-time homebuyer assistance, but not many people seem to know about it. We need to change that.”

One thing Sue makes completely clear. “We will not be annexing Seaview!”

Dogs, fireworks, and miscellany

Several members of the city council have talked about the possibility of creating a dog park in Long Beach. “We’ve talked about this for awhile,” Sue says. “I think the right property is available — we have a viable area between Bolstad Avenue and the restrooms. There might need to be some wetlands mitigation, but the potential is there. It needs to be far away from residential areas, in a place easy to police on a regular basis so people aren’t dumping dogs. How to do it is all out there — we certainly don’t need to be inventing something new.”

She mentions other miscellaneous community topics of concern. “We don’t have our own food bank for Long Beach, but maybe it makes more sense to have the existing ones on the north and south ends.”

On the hot topic of fireworks, Sue says, “I think we’ve pretty well resolved that. As of July 2024 there are no fireworks allowed within the city limits, and we’ll continue to have a public display on July 4th and New Years. It will be very controlled. But what happens on the beach will be up to Parks and Rec. If they stop fireworks on the beach, the county should follow suit because, if not, fireworks will be pushed into other residential areas. We’ve taken the first step, but I’m nervous about it.”

“We do have to care about our businesses that have been affected. We may have to retrain people on some other reason to be here than lighting fireworks. It may change the type of people who come and we need to be cognizant of that. We’re also looking into drone light shows. I’d love to see us explore options before they set any kind of ban on the beach.”

“On a related topic, our firemen are excellent at fighting fires in the dune grass. And there are some great grants available for wildfire preparedness. I’d like to see us do some preventive thinning of our beach pines in places and improve the fire access roads along the dunes. There should be easy access every couple of blocks. I’m going to be listening pretty carefully to our fire experts about this.”

On the scary prospect of a tsunami, always hovering in the back of our minds, Sue remarks, “I don’t anticipate anything being drivable. If we get a warning, I think we’ll be fine. But maybe our best routes are walkable. If it’s a [Cascadia Subduction Zone] quake with a sudden liquefaction, I don’t know if there’s any plan that would work. I guess we have to accept that as a risk of living in a place that we all love. We need to be as prepared as we can be, but every place you might live has a risk factor — it’s just a reality.”

In sum

Overall, Sue’s vision for Long Beach is to guide and empower the council to make changes that benefit the whole community and, perhaps, create models for county-wide change. She clearly has a drive to make a difference, whether it’s in her work at Bold Gallery, the Peninsula Arts Center, or as mayor of Long Beach.

Sue has a clear understanding of life in Pacific County — the beauties and the benefits, as well as the areas where there’s room for improvement; and she’s adamant about creating a governmental structure that includes empathy, transparency and caring for others. I’d say that’s just the kind of leadership we need.