Jonathan Cannon’s two-and-a-half-year tenure as Baker City manager will end without resolution to the challenges that marked the final 16 months or so of his time at City Hall.

Cannon, who has been the city’s chief executive since Jan. 1, 2021, announced in a May 31 letter to city councilors that he is resigning July 3.

Cannon, who came to Baker City from North Carolina, where he was city manager for a town of about 700 residents, didn’t cite a reason for resigning in the letter. He said on Friday, June 2 that he was considering releasing a public statement.

Cannon deserves credit for calling attention to the city’s budget issues, which are not insignificant.

The biggest single source of revenue for the city’s general fund, which includes the police and fire departments, is local property taxes. Those total almost $3 million annually, about one-third of general fund revenues. But property tax increases are limited by state law to 3% yearly (with some exceptions such as for new construction). That’s not the case with expenses, the largest of which is personnel.

Property tax revenue in the general fund actually declined slightly, by 2.4%, from fiscal 2020-21 to fiscal 2021-22. The police department budget, meanwhile, the biggest in the general fund, increased by 6.5% during that period.

Although Cannon told councilors about his budget concerns in November 2022, some expressed surprise when Cannon said, during a March 28 meeting, that the city was facing a $1 million shortfall in the general fund for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

The seven elected councilors, not Cannon, are responsible for setting city policies, including approving budgets. Cannon did what he is paid to do — explain to councilors the fiscal situation the city is facing.

The changes the budget board made — the city council has the final say, and must adopt the final budget by June 30 — are not sustainable in the long run, since they involve using one-time federal COVID-19 payments as well as a $490,000 transfer from the street fund to the general fund. The latter transfer will exacerbate the city’s struggle to maintain its streets, a trend that started about two decades ago.

A significant, and troubling, legacy of Cannon’s tenure is one for which he is partly responsible — the elimination last year of the ambulance service operated by the city fire department.

Cannon proposed that in March 2022. The city council agreed to do so. Baker County, which by state law is responsible for choosing ambulance providers, hired a private firm, Metro West, to replace the fire department.

Cannon contended that the city couldn’t afford to continue to operate ambulances based on its billing revenue. This claim wasn’t convincing then. And the loss of ambulance revenue has worsened, rather than improved, the city’s financial situation. The cuts in the fire department’s budget are less than the revenue the city gave up by getting rid of its ambulances.

But the harmful effects aren’t solely fiscal.

Ending ambulance service naturally resulted in staffing cuts in the fire department, since ambulance runs accounted for about 85% of the service calls, fires being comparatively rare. The fire department workforce dropped from 16.25 full-time equivalent positions to 10.5 for the current fiscal year, which started July 1, 2023.

The attrition in the fire department has been much more extensive, however.

Several other firefighters have resigned during the past several months, including, in May, Chief David Blair. The two most recent to leave are 18-year veteran Travis Fields and Casey Johnson, who has worked for the department since December 2017. Both cited low morale in the department that they attributed directly to the curtailment of ambulance service. Fields and Johnson both said they missed being able to work as paramedics, which had made up the bulk of their job previously. They also cited excessive overtime, as the staffing cuts resulted in both spending more time on duty but, often, with no emergency calls to respond to. Both Fields and Johnson have taken jobs with the La Grande Fire Department, which, unlike Baker City’s department, remains a dual-role department, handling ambulance calls as well as fires.

The staffing situation caused by resignations is so dire that on June 2 Cannon emailed councilors to say that he had authorized Sean Lee, the interim chief, to pay overtime to ensure at least one firefighter was on shift. At the time, Cannon wrote, there were two June days with no one scheduled to be on duty.

The firefighters who have resigned did so on their volition, to be sure. But many, if not most, did so either because they lacked seniority to retain their jobs due to the budget cuts resulting from the cessation of ambulance service, or because that dramatic change in their duties left them unsatisfied.

Ultimately, the fire department’s ability to deal with fires has been substantially weakened as a direct result of the policy change that Cannon proposed and the city council endorsed.

His successor, who would face a daunting challenge regardless due to fiscal factors for which Cannon isn’t responsible, will unfortunately have an even tougher job as a result of changes that Cannon himself set in motion.