In the Register-Guard story “$4 gas: Fueling our fears,” Veneta Mayor Tim Brooker says that communities need to “re-think how we repair roads” using materials less dependent on oil and that “our leaders really need to make change” in the face of rising oil prices.

As well as being Mayor of Veneta, Brooker is a grandfather, a businessman and a commuter.

Brooker has been invited to be part of the final “Next Steps” panel of the Lane County Moving Forward Together conference, but has not yet confirmed his availability. Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy, Springfield Mayor Leiken and Lane County Commissioner Faye Stewart are confirmed to be on this panel.

According to the Register-Guard story:

[Tim] Brooker is a grandfather, a businessman, a commuter, and the mayor of the small town where he lives. And he is concerned on all of those levels.

“I don’t know what the latest numbers are … how long the oil reserves will last, but then it’s gone,” Brooker said. “There’s no way of replacing it. There are no alternatives today, we should be planning today for what those alternatives are and we’re not.”

Brooker is worried about the short-term and long-term.

In the short-term, prices are going up so sharply, as worldwide demand for oil rises, that some people are already struggling to cope. “The condition is not going to go away,” he said.

“People will start making decisions … if they’re commuting long distance to go to work, and making minimum wage, they’ll start weighing ‘Is it worth it?’ until businesses have to step in and do something drastic in order to keep employees on the job,” said Brooker, who commutes daily to his job in order management at Levi Strauss in Eugene.

“The real concern that I have is that price increases will not only be in gas, but in heating oils, in everything—food prices have already gone way up. It will really make life miserable, particularly for low-income people. What happens to folks who have to make a choice between food, heating oil and gasoline when it reaches $7 a gallon?”

The ripple effect of rising oil prices extend throughout the economy, Brooker said. “I’m getting close to retirement age, I’m seeing my retirement fund that I’ve been working on for years start to shrink in value. What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to my grandchildren?”

In the longer term, Brooker is worried about what is going to happen in a world where more and more oil is being consumed every day.

He sees some isolated cases where changes are happening, to reduce dependence on oil. Increasing use of public transit can help reduce demand, he said.

And, “I read an article just the other day, that communities are going to have to re-think how they’re going to repair roads, using materials that aren’t as expensive to make. As oil prices rise, and oil reserves diminish, we can no longer afford to make repairs (using petroleum-based products).”

But what about all the other things that use petroleum, Brooker said, down to the plastic items people use every day. “How are we going to make those changes?”

He has some hope for research into alternative fuels, he said, although at this point “it’s a small effort.” Most of all, Brooker is frustrated by what he sees as a lack of leadership at all levels.

“Our leaders really need to make change and it’s not being done,” he said. “Not to the point where the public can actually see it being done. If something is being done behind the scenes, usually you’ll see something about it. We’re not hearing anybody answer those questions for us.”

“People are just to the point where they don’t know what to do individually and there really isn’t any group effort going out to it. There isn’t any public outrage going out to it. Even my generation, and civil disobedience came easy to it. Even my generation is just transfixed.”

About all that people seem to be able to do, he said, is “make that wish that some scientist comes up with something.”