Meet Our Mid-Valley: Friends of Marion County President Roger Kaye stands up for farmland
This is part of a weekly series introducing readers to individuals who are passionate about our Mid-Valley community.
Roger Kaye often arrives at Marion County Commissioner meeting early.
He enters the boardroom – one of the few people in the room wearing a face mask – and signs in on the sheet just inside the door indicating that he wants to testify.
He sits in the back of the room, often by himself, and spreads out the papers around him from a thick file folder that might include his notes, county planning documents and some legal documents that support the position he’s going to be arguing.
In his role as president of Friends of Marion County, Kaye is there to voice his position on land use issues.
When called to give public testimony, he is often the only person to argue that side of the issue, usually in opposition to someone’s plan to develop land the state has designated for farm use into something like a new commercial endeavor or housing.
“It’s not a career. It’s not a hobby. It’s a passion,” Kaye said.
Some people view Kaye as anti-development.
He says that’s not the case.
If someone proposes to develop land within a city’s urban growth boundary – even if it’s in unincorporated Marion County – he usually agrees with it. He understands housing is needed in the area, and he says that’s the appropriate place for it.
“If it’s in the city, I don’t usually get involved,” he said.
For a 76-year-old retired chemist who didn’t know much about land use until about 30 years ago, he’s become a notable land use advocate.
In the past few years, Friends of Marion County has won arguments before the state’s land use board of appeals on decisions to allow commercial activity in conjunction with farm use and an exception to allow a home on a farm.
It’s not a bad track record for a person who was born and raised in New York City and didn’t move to rural Turner until the 1980s.
After serving in the U.S. Army, Kaye studied analytical chemistry, graduated from the University of Iowa and later attended the University of Nebraska.
After marrying his wife, Aileen, they moved to Salem in 1976. Kaye worked as an industrial chemist for companies in Albany and Portland.
The Kayes bought two horses and moved them to the Salem Saddle Club near Interstate 5. Then, in 1986, they purchased a farm outside Turner in an unincorporated part of the county.
“We built the barn,” he said.
Getting permission to build that barn was not easy.
Kaye remembers arguing with the county’s planning director.
“I said, ‘You can’t keep a horse in the city. Where else can you keep a horse?’” he remembers. “So I talked them into seeing it my way. And then the Legislature moved to permit horse breeding and ownership on farmland.”
In the 1990s, Marion County considered approving designating land around Turner that would have paved the way for it to be developed into a series of aggregate mines.
The area was near Cloverdale School outside Turner. The Kayes connected with the parents association from the school and met and organized neighbors. They had a fundraiser and hired an attorney.
The zoning was eventually denied by the county, and the experience was the start of Kaye's involvement in land use issues.
The attorney they hired in the effort, Robert Liberty, later became executive director of 1000 Friends of Oregon, the state’s land use watchdog group founded by former Gov. Tom McCall.
In the early 2000s, energy company Calpine proposed building a natural gas power plant on 50 acres of farmland on the edge of the Turner city limits.
It was another fight, and led to an attempted recall of the mayor and two city councilors.
“We worked hard to protect those members of the city council,” Kaye said. “They stayed on the council.”
That plant never happened.
It was through that fight that Kaye became involved in the Friends of Marion County.
The all-volunteer nonprofit was founded as an affiliate of 1000 Friends of Oregon by Bob Lindsey, who was Salem mayor from 1973 to 1977, to provide a watchdog for land use decisions in the county.
Kaye became president of the organization about 20 years ago. Since then, he’s been involved in decisions like the denial of the Bi-Mart Country Music Festival near Jefferson, the proposed Jefferson RAVE concert outside the city and a proposed hemp processing factory near a school in Turner. Each of those was denied by the county.
Kaye estimates he spends 20 hours each week working on things for Friends of Marion County.
He’s heard lawyers argue why he is wrong and elected officials accusing him of being against progress. Kaye has thick skin at this point, and it doesn’t bother him.
“I’m not shy,” Kaye said. “They can’t really do anything to me. Someone has to watchdog to make sure the counties and cities obey the laws.”
If you have an idea for someone we should profile for this series, email Statesman Journal senior news editor Alia Beard Rau at arau@gannett.com.
Bill Poehler covers Marion County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Friends of Marion County President Roger Kaye stands up for farmland
