We’re asking everyone to open up their personal phone books and call their friends today to make sure they have voted. This election is going to be one of the most important in recent history, and even if you or your friends/family are supporting good candidates, it’s all for naught if the ballots don’t get returned. The most important support you can give any good candidate is getting your ballot counted.

In our area, here are the places you can return your ballots before 8pm tomorrow night:

Clackamas County Elections Office1710 Red Soils Ct. Ste 100, Oregon City

24-hour drop box available, open til 8pm on election night

West Linn Public Library

1595 Burns Street, West Linn

Box is indoors – they’ll be open until 8pm today and tomorrow

West Linn City Hall

22500 Salama Road, West Linn

24-hour drop box located outside

Tualatin City Hall

18880 SW Martinazzi Rd, Tualatin

24-hour drop box located outside

Lake Oswego Public Library

706 4th Street, Lake Oswego

Open until 9pm tonight, and accepting ballots until 8pm tomorrow, indoors

Wilsonville Public Libary

8200 SW Wilsonville Road, Wilsonville

Boxes are indoors, and open until 8pm

So, please forward this to all your friends, get them out to vote. Offer to drive their ballot in for them if they don’t have time to get to the ballot return boxes. If we’re going to restore balance to our government, it starts with you, and your right to vote!

The campaign has knocked on over 25,000 doors, has made thousands of phone calls, spoken to countless numbers of people in the community, and put up hundreds of signs. We’re not planning to stop until election night.

When I’m elected, the hard work will continue. I’ll take this same energy and conviction with me to Salem.

Elections are an important part of America’s culture. Voting is a direct way to be involved in the outcome of our government. Don’t let this chance pass you by; take time out from your busy day and make sure your voice is heard. There are only 5 days left to make an impact for Oregon’s future. Don’t let this opportunity slip by. If you haven’t done so already, please make sure you mail in your ballot. Then make sure ten of your friends do the same.

We are still doing lots of get out the vote efforts….if you can make even just 25 phone calls for the campaign, please let us know and we’ll get you a list. Every voter matters this November – we need to make sure they know it!

What: Meet Julie at Lee Farms
When: Saturday, October 16 from 11 AM – 2 PM
Where: Lee Farms, 21975 SW 65th Ave. Tualatin, OR

So if you have some free time available this Saturday, and you haven’t gotten your Halloween pumpkins yet, come down to Lee Farms to meet Julie and purchase your Halloween pumkins!

If you have any questions, you may give us a call at 971-227-6541. Happy Haunting!

“Parrish may have been the most pleasant surprise we had during our interviews” and that “Parrish, the wife of an Iraq war vet, struck us as genuine, smart and able to empathize with anybody.”

It’s both humbling and amazing to have their support. The Willamette Week admittedly doesn’t endorse many Republican candidates, so it’s a particularly meaningful endorsement for our race.

You can read the entire WW endorsement articles and see the videos – LINK

This week, we also received the endorsement from the Oregon Small Business Coalition on the same day that Julie’s company was ranked 6th in the US by Startup Nation and the National Association for Moms in Business as a leading mom-owned business.

There will certainly be no stronger advocate for Oregon’s business community in the next session than Julie, so we need to continue to work hard for the next few weeks to get her elected!

This week we’re crossing the 18,000 door-mark. There is no way we could have gotten this far if it wasn’t for the wonderful group of volunteers that have helped the campaign over the last three and a half months. District 37 voters are very engaged right now, and they are definitely aware an election is happening. We’ll continue to work this race until the last possible minute via doors, phones, mailboxes and the airwaves.

Visit with State Representative Matt Wingard, and Julie Parrish, candidate for State Representative in House District 37 as they talk about the tax increases that happened in the last legislative session, and what they’d like to do to get Oregon back on track for our community.

Where: Sandelie Golf Course, West – 3030 SW Advance Rd, Wilsonville

When: Saturday, October 9th from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm

Cost: $20 per car-load; $10 suggested donation to launch the cannon; $3 for carving pumpkins

For more information, call Sandelie West Golf Course at 503-682-2022.

Click here to download the flyer.

Contact: Ian Tolleson- 971-227-6541

West Linn- Democratic groups desperate to distract voters from their abysmal handling of Oregon’s economy struck again today with false attacks over a red-herring sales tax. This time, West Linn businesswoman and candidate for state representative Julie Parrish was their target.

In a mailing to local voters, a political action committee headed by Democratic legislative leaders claims Julie Parrish wants to “add” a sales tax. The false attack was leveled by the same Democratic leaders who passed $1.6 billion in new taxes and fees on Oregonians last year.

“I don’t support adding a sales tax and I’ve repeatedly said so in no uncertain terms,” said Parrish, who is campaigning on a platform of fiscal responsibility. “Oregonians are taxed enough already. I do not support a sales tax or raising taxes on Oregonians.”

Like Future PAC has done in other districts throughout the Portland area, they have attempted to raise an issue that no one is talking about or even proposing. Click here for more coverage on this issue.

“It’s seems to me that the only person who’s brought up the issue of a sales tax is John Kitzhaber,” noted Parrish in reference to a debate last spring between Kitzhaber and his primary opponent Bill Bradbury. “Oregonians have rejected a sales tax multiple times and if the issue of adding a sales tax came up again, I would stand with them in opposing this issue.”

There’s a common theme this election season amongst voters. As I knock on doors of potential constituents, it’s like a mantra that echoes from one street to the next. It’s coming from people in all parties, across all ages. It’s delivered with a frustrated sigh by mothers upset about lost school days. It comes with some pretty colorful words from disgruntled homeowners on the verge of foreclosure. It’s whispered quietly by public employees who fear for their jobs if they speak too loudly. It’s bemoaned by business owners who worry about having to lay off staff to keep their doors open. The mantra is very simple, but it’s growing louder. “Something’s got to give!”

Oregon’s budget situation is one of the most untenable in the country. State revenues are consistently falling; unemployment is hovering around 10.6%. Oregonians I’ve spoken to believe the Legislature’s failure to plan, inability to budget, and propensity to spend have put Oregon on a destructive financial path. While many voters believe that something does indeed have to give, they are worried about just what that “something” is…

click here to read the whole article.

You can read the article and view the video by clicking here.

I have mixed emotions with the kids going back to school this week. On one hand, I feel like the dad in Staples’ back-to-school commercial. He dances down the aisles buying school supplies for his very unhappy children. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year” plays in the background as he frolics with glue sticks and pencils.

We had our ice cream social at the kids’ school on Sept. 2. Their crayons and spiral notebooks are tucked safely in the classroom. It is indeed a wonderful time at the Parrish house. Our oldest is headed into his last year of primary school. As excited as I am that another school year is kicking off, I have to wonder what’s going to happen moving forward.

At the back-to-school event last week, my son’s teacher informed me that cutting 15 school days from the academic calendar was the final outcome of a long summer vacation filled with discussions about budget cuts, the superintendent’s retirement package and schools that failed to meet academic benchmarks. With my oldest just a few short years from high school, and given the recent round of cuts, I’m no longer certain our children will be ready to go out into the world beyond public schools.

What does a 15-day cut for schools really mean? It’s more than just a loss of instructional time.

Oregon tends to be short sighted in its thinking when it comes to education. A 15-day cut in West Linn-Wilsonville’s school district calendar is about 158 instructional days. Compared to other states that have protected instructional time, ninth-graders entering high school this year will lose nearly 100 days over a four-year high school career. We’ll be graduating students who are only halfway through their senior year. This means our kids won’t be able to compete with kids from other states for college entrance and scholarship dollars. This is unacceptable.

This decision doesn’t just affect students; it affects families and the businesses that employ parents. The unintended consequence of this decision is that parents without vacation time or a back-up daycare plan will call in sick, costing both lost wages for the family and loss of productivity for employers.

During this next legislative campaign cycle, you have the opportunity right now to engage candidates with the question, “How will you fix education?”

Short, quipped answers like “we need more money for schools” or “we have to think about education reform” are not the answers you should accept. Legislators need to be ready to address the elephants in the room – and there isn’t just one elephant, there’s a herd of them!

The key element to education reform is accountability; for costs, for outcomes, and for the stewardship of our resources. We need to devise a plan around reform that addresses accountability head on.

First, we must rethink the value proposition for schools. If we invest $100 this year, and we only get $50 back, would we make the same investment the next year? Of course not!

Yet we do this every year in education. We invest the money, but across the state the return on investment is low as students fail standardized tests, they don’t graduate on time, teachers don’t have the tools they need to do their job and little more than half of our tax dollars ever hit the classroom. This has to change.

Merit pay and holding teachers accountable is a solution we hear bantered often in the media. I want a system that addresses ineffective teaching, but the problem doesn’t always lie with the teacher. It’s hard to hold the teacher accountable for failing to educate kids when he never had a say-so in the education plan. We need to return more autonomy back to the local buildings before we can even start engaging in conversations about a merit-based system.

Lastly, we need to make sure that we question where our tax dollars are being spent. The bulk of a school’s budget needs to go towards core education functions.

The playing field should be leveled so that schools can rely on funding sources and plan accordingly. And if legislators and candidates are going to use education as a platform, they need to be willing to address the education inequity that happens in our rural communities where local option and capital bond tax measures rarely pass.

As summer fades, my kids are getting back into their fall routine. Without strong advocates in the next legislative session though, my kids and Oregon’s students are in for a long, dark winter.

Summertime means many things to each of us, depending on how you fill your days. For some, it’s watching our children playing in park fountains on hot afternoons. It’s weekend trips to our beautiful beaches, or camping in Oregon’s forests. You might be working in your yard on a Saturday afternoon, or visiting with neighbors on your back deck in the evening. This month, your summer days might have been spent at the Crawfish Festival in Tualatin, Music in the Park in West Linn, or one of the county fairs nearby. No doubt about it, summer in Oregon keeps us all busy.

One of the things we don’t usually associate with summer is hunger. Harvests across the state are in full swing, packing farmers’ markets with customers. Oregon is an agricultural state, producing more than 220 agricultural products, many of them edible.

According to the Oregon Department of Agriculture, Oregon ranks No. 1 in production of blackberries, Dungeness crab, hazelnuts, and several other food-based crops. Six of the top 10 highest grossing commodities we produce in Oregon are items for consumption. These include wheat, dairy, and pears. Oregon agriculture generates over $4 billion in annual sales.

Given food production outside of the Portland area is one of our strongest industrial sectors, it’s disconcerting that almost 20 percent of Oregonians are receiving Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. In May 2010, SNAP, still commonly referred to as food stamps, had 706,000 participants statewide. That number jumped by 100,000 Oregonians in just one year. As we move deeper into joblessness and foreclosure, the increase in need has put pressure on non-profit and church-based organizations.

In our communities, we have two food pantries that do a very good job operating on shoestring budgets, yet feed hundreds of families each month. The West Linn pantry specifically receives no government commodities. They have learned to stretch a dollar. You might see Jenny Loney, one of the volunteers in West Linn, at the grocery checkout using a stack of coupons to buy needed items that didn’t get donated this week.

Both Loney and Tracy Smith, program coordinator at the Tualatin School House Pantry, will tell you that in the summer need is high. One reason is that children who would normally be eligible for free or reduced lunch are home from school with empty cupboards. Their access to nutritious foods is reduced dramatically in the summer.

Having personally worked to start a summer lunch program in Wilsonville, I’ve seen firsthand how something as simple as a baggie of carrots or sliced apples goes a long way for a hungry child.

In summer, donations are harder to come by. With no clear call to action to donate (like Thanksgiving or Christmas), donating food falls off the radar. Civic and community groups are aware of this, working to fill the gap. Rotarians in West Linn are actively trying to collect food at Music in the Park on Thursday nights. Local businesses are stepping in to offer leftover baked goods and other food products, although pantries continue to need people committed to picking up those goods.

Sadly, those efforts fall short of keeping the pantries stocked on a consistent basis. High need items like canned fruit, personal hygiene items, and cleaning products are in constant demand. Cash donations to meet overhead and fill holes are always needed.

Long term, the health of the people in our communities is going to rely on our ability to support each other through hard times. Sometimes, people just need a hand up. The families accessing the pantries are trying to get their lives back on track after losing a job, an illness, or family tragedy. When we donate, we’re also helping homebound seniors, or people on fixed incomes who are struggling to afford food in the face of rising costs.

On Saturday, Aug. 28, we’re offering a fun way for the community to come together and fight summer hunger. Local businesses Lee Farms and Bulls Eye Coffee are partnering with me to connect families to food. We’re encouraging you to bring your families to Lee Farms, 21975 S.W. 65th Ave., Tualatin, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., to enjoy the farm activities. The suggested donation is two cans of non-perishable food per person, but you’re welcome to bring more. It’s an opportunity to stock pantry shelves, connect to where our food comes from, and support local businesses. All of these things combined make our community strong and vibrant.

Please join us in helping our community members in need, and the local food pantries that have made feeding people their mission. They deserve our support.