Philomath lost one of its most popular public servants last weekend. Rocky Sloan — electrician, motorcycle rider, former city councilor and three-term mayor — died Aug. 8 at age 58. He’s the second former Philomath mayor to pass away in the last two months, following the death of Dale Collins on June 14.
Rocky was toward the end of his first term as mayor when I started covering Philomath and my first impression stuck with me — he was a straight shooter. He gave me what I perceived as honest answers without any political spin and over the years I got to know him fairly well. We’d talk about our own careers — I remember him telling me about the Hayward Field renovation project he worked on as an electrician six or seven years ago. I think the last really good conversation we had was at his house in the Neabeack Hill neighborhood.
Obituary: Rocky Alan Sloan (1968-2026)
Rocky Alan Sloan, longtime Philomath electrician and former mayor and city councilor, passed away Aug. 8 at age 58. Celebration of Life set for Sept. 20.
Rocky’s path to Philomath’s top office started in 2009 after he had been elected the previous November to his first term on the City Council. He was re-elected for another two years, then ran for mayor in 2012 and took office in 2013. He ran unopposed in the next two elections and served through the end of 2018 — 10 years total on the council and in the mayor’s chair.
I once asked him what he found most impressive about Philomath. “When the word gets out that there’s a need, how quickly everybody rallies behind that and jumps in to help,” he said.
He didn’t shy away from the hard parts of the job, either. The fluoride debate, various annexations — he brought those up with me more than once. His approach was simple — you had to have thick skin and “just chalk it up at the end of the day that you just have a difference of opinion. There’s no right or wrong.”
What he loved was being useful.
“I’ll miss being the fixer — somebody calls me up with a problem in town and I try to fix it and I usually do … I can usually make everybody happy,” he told me. “I’ll miss that and interacting with the staff, department heads.”
When his term ended in December 2018, incoming Mayor Eric Niemann presented him with a key to the city. Then-City Recorder Ruth Post put it simply: “I think Rocky has been a mayor who truly cares about this community. And he just wasn’t the mayor at City Council meetings, he was the mayor 24/7. He did a great job and we’re going to miss him.”
City Manager Chris Workman was hired during Rocky’s first term in 2014, succeeding Randy Kugler.
“Selfishly I think that was the most important decision he and the council made during his term!” Workman joked.
Actually, Rocky once told me that hiring a city manager was “one of the most stressful things that I think I went through on this whole thing” — his shorthand for the full decade he spent as councilor and mayor. “Randy (Kugler) was so well-liked and did such a really good job and you want that to continue and I was so stressed. It ended up working out really, really good.”
Workman remembers a mayor who ran meetings the same way he lived — unpretentious and direct.
“My first impression of him was that he loved Philomath and was very proud of his small town,” Workman said. “He kept meetings pretty casual — he wore blue jeans, a T-shirt and an infectious smile to almost every meeting.
“Rocky had a willingness to learn more about a pressing topic and then get on with taking action,” Workman continued. “He took a lot of pride in ‘not being Corvallis’ — meaning, not overevaluating things and getting stuck in ‘paralysis by analysis.’”
Rocky’s fingerprints are on some of the city’s most visible projects. He oversaw completion of the Randy Kugler Community Hall at City Park. He also led the council in establishing restrictions on where marijuana dispensaries could locate — a decision Workman said most credit with preserving the town’s family-friendly character.
Then there was the “Philomath You’re Home” campaign, which grew into a breakfast presentation for realtors and developers at the high school and ultimately helped bring the Oak Springs Apartments to town.
“He recognized the need for housing of all types, not just more subdivisions of single-family homes for the small number of people that can afford them,” Workman said.
Transportation mattered to him, too.
“Rocky was very interested in public infrastructure, especially transportation and Safe Routes to Schools,” Workman recalled. “He was adamant that the Safe Routes to Schools projects carried forward into the updated transportation master plan and that they were prioritized appropriately.”
Rocky himself mentioned the process of putting together the Streetscapes project and establishing the Urban Renewal Fund as major accomplishments.
Doug Edmonds, who served on the council during Rocky’s second term, remembers a mayor who valued everyone’s time.
“He liked to keep meetings short — one hour or less,” Edmonds said. “He was approachable, and at the same time, it was clear that if an item was ‘not of interest’ it would not be on the agenda. This helped to keep the meetings short.”
Public speaking wasn’t his thing, either.
“He did not like public speaking and would let someone else ‘present’ for the mayor, oftentimes the city manager, Chris Workman,” Edmonds said. “He would participate in the meeting just like one of the councilors.”
A celebration of life is planned for 1-3 p.m. on Sept. 20 — and it seems appropriate that it will take place at City Park’s Randy Kugler Community Hall.
2. Slow progress
The city’s two development sites — the vacant lot at South 14th and Main and the city-owned parcel at 20th and Main — are both crawling forward — and the more advanced of the two just hit a setback that puts its future in doubt.
Workman told the City Council at its Aug. 10 meeting that one of the two development teams competing for the South 14th and Main property has withdrawn from consideration. Jamestown Development of Lake Oswego — one of two firms that had been through the RFP process after interviews with the council and Housing and Economic Development Committee in April — pulled out.
“We did hear back from one of the two respondents that they’ve withdrawn interest,” Workman said. “They said they’ve got other big projects they’re working on … They just don’t think they’d be able to give this project the time that it would really need.”
That leaves Hanlon Development of The Dalles as the sole remaining prospect for the mixed-use project. Workman said Hanlon hasn’t formally withdrawn but has also been weighing other work.
“Hanlon has still got some interest but also has some other things in the fire but they’ve got some partner organizations that they’re reaching out to to see if there’s interest,” Workman said. “They were one of the first ones that said they just need a little bit of time to respond. So, we’ll see if they respond to something and I’ll notify them that the other group’s backed out, maybe that’ll pique their interest.”
Workman didn’t sugarcoat the setback: “I was hoping to get proposals in from both of them and have to pick,” he said.
In another section of town, the affordable housing project planned for the city’s half-acre lot at 20th and Main is inching forward. Workman said the city has negotiated a purchase agreement with Commonwealth Development Corp., the Wisconsin-based nonprofit that’s been the exclusive prospective developer for the site, and that agreement is now in final legal review. Danny DiFrancesco, Commonwealth’s vice president of development, is scheduled to present the purchase agreement, provide a project update and take questions at the council’s Sept. 14 meeting.
Even with an agreement in place, the timeline still hinges on the state.
“We’re still waiting for state funding to get lined up to where they have money to give to these programs,” Workman said. “So it was kind of a let’s hurry and get an agreement in place knowing that we were going to have to get a foot in line and that’s where they are — they’re in line and they’re waiting on the state.”
Workman said locking in the agreement now doesn’t mean shovels are close.
“You want to get the purchase agreement in place, but then they’re still going to be waiting for probably another year or so before they know if they’re getting funding or not,” he said.
That leaves the council with a judgment call to make down the road.
Said Workman, “Are we OK with that or do we cut line and try to find somebody else who’s going to have to then get in line for the same funding? I think it kind of makes sense to stay where we’re at and just know we have to be patient.”
3. Football shakeup
With practice opening Monday and the season drawing closer, it’s worth a look at where Philomath High School athletics stand under the Oregon School Activities Association’s reclassification and district assignments for the 2026-30 cycle. Philomath will stay put in the Oregon West Conference for most sports — but the football team is facing a whole new set of opponents.
The OSAA reclassifies its member schools every four years based on enrollment by using Average Daily Membership figures run through a formula that sorts schools into six classifications — 1A (10-65 students), 2A (66-140), 3A (141-280), 4A (281-580), 5A (581-1,025) and 6A (1,026 and up). The association has used the six-classification system since 2006-07. Schools can petition to play up or down a classification, though that largely comes down to winning percentage — a team with an overall winning percentage below .200 is automatically granted permission to move down, while teams between .200 and .300 are considered but not guaranteed.
Philomath’s enrollment came in at 363, keeping the Warriors solidly in 4A and in the Oregon West Conference for the next four years. The conference looks a little different this time around, though. North Marion and Sweet Home are out — North Marion moved to the Tri-Valley Conference and Sweet Home became eligible to drop to 3A. Taking their place are Central and Taft.
That leaves the Oregon West with Philomath joined by Cascade, Central, Newport, Stayton and Taft. Cascade and Central are the conference heavyweights by enrollment, at 577 and 550 students, respectively. Taft is the smallest at 291.
The bigger shake-up is on the football field. Philomath has been moved from Special District 3 into Special District 2, meaning an entirely new group of opponents. Last season, the Warriors squared off with Junction City, Sweet Home, Marist Catholic, Crescent Valley and Cottage Grove. Now they’ll face Cascade, Central, Estacada, Gladstone, Molalla and Stayton.
That group includes a heavyweight — Cascade, which won last year’s state title in dominant fashion, beating Henley 52-0.
Look for Philomath High fall sports previews over the next couple of weeks as each program moves closer to their season openers.
(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).
