EDITORIAL: Vacant council offers chances for residents to serve

Published 11:45 am Wednesday, October 4, 2023

If you’re a registered voter who has lived within the Baker City limits for at least a year, you might get the chance to help the city address significant challenges.

And if you’re interested in a public service commitment lasting more than a year or so, you might be able to demonstrate your abilities to city voters in what amounts to an extended audition before the November 2024 election.

But you don’t have long to decide.

With all seven positions on the Baker City Council vacant, the three Baker County commissioners, under a state law, plan to appoint four city councilors, constituting a quorum, on Oct. 18. The deadline to apply for one of the positions is 5 p.m. on Oct. 9. Applications are available at www.bakercity.com/2248/City-Council-Elections.

The four new councilors appointed Oct. 18 will convene soon after to choose three other city residents to fill the remaining vacancies.

Those seven councilors won’t have the luxury of settling into office.

They will have to make crucial decisions, and soon.

Hiring a city manager, for instance. The current interim manager, Jon France, has a six-month contract that expires Dec. 28. France is one of three candidates for the job. Under the council-manager form of government Baker City uses, the manager is in effect the city’s CEO, responsible for overseeing city operations.

The manager will work with councilors and department heads, such as the police and fire chiefs and public works director, to put together a budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2024.

This is hardly a typical budget-writing process.

France told the previous council that the general fund, which includes the police and fire departments, will be short on revenue. How short is not yet clear, with the current fiscal year slightly more than one quarter elapsed.

The public safety fee that took effect Oct. 1, and which must be used for the police and fire departments, will help to bridge the financial gap.

But that fee, at $15 per month for residential water/sewer accounts and $50 for commercial accounts, is also the most regressive of the revenue options the previous council discussed over the preceding several months. Nor is the fee revenue sufficient to hire additional employees in either department. The police department, although it hasn’t been depleted by resignations to the extent the fire department was after a previous council’s misguided decision in 2022 to end ambulance service, is accruing excessive overtime to ensure around-the-clock patrolling. This is both expensive and harmful to department morale.

The new councilors need to examine in detail all revenue ideas that have been broached, and ideally will suggest others. Among the former are increasing franchise fees that utilities pay the city for using public rights-of-way, imposing a new fee on short-term vacation rentals, and asking voters, perhaps in the May 2024 election, to approve a local gasoline tax.

The responsibilities facing this new council are intimidating.

So is the possibility that they will be criticized not for their actions but for their perceived political predilections. This is neither necessary nor helpful. Council positions are nonpartisan, according to the city charter. Moreover, the city needs from its new representatives the willingness to listen, discuss, debate and decide based on sound judgment. We don’t need blind allegiance to a partisan viewpoint.

Councilors don’t serve for financial reasons, to be sure. Per the city charter, councilors are paid $10 per meeting, to a maximum of $150 per year.

But the residents who end up seated on the podium at City Hall will have a chance to perform a public service to their neighbors which can’t be measured monetarily.

And when city voters decide next November to choose a slate of seven, voters might have candidates who have already shown their commitment to their fellow residents, and wisdom to make reasonable decisions on their behalf.