EDITORIAL: New city council will be busy from the start

Published 12:30 pm Tuesday, November 15, 2022

The newly constituted Baker City Council will be busy. Although final election results likely won’t be released until Nov. 30, based on preliminary totals, and the number of ballots that could still be counted, it’s pretty certain that when 2023 dawns, just three of the seven current councilors will still be in office — Jason Spriet, Johnny Waggoner Sr. and Dean Guyer.

Waggoner and Guyer, based on preliminary results, were elected Nov. 8 to four-year terms. Spriet is in the middle of a four-year term.

Of the four other incumbents, Joanna Dixon declined to run for reelection, and Kenyon Damschen, who was on the ballot, wasn’t among the top four.

Mayor Kerry McQuisten is resigning later this month because she’s moving outside the city limits and will no longer be eligible, per the city charter, to serve as a councilor.

Shane Alderson was elected Nov. 8 as chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners, and since he can’t hold both positions simultaneously, he’ll be leaving the council at the end of the year.

Spriet, Waggoner and Guyer will be joined in January by newcomers Matthew Diaz and Beverly Calder. Diaz received the most votes Nov. 8, and based on preliminary results, Calder, a former councilor, finished fourth. That means she’ll serve a two-year term. Diaz, Waggoner and Guyer will serve four-year terms.

Among the first tasks for these five councilors will be to appoint replacements for McQuisten and Alderson. The city charter delegates that authority to remaining councilors.

Although the charter doesn’t prescribe how the councilors should go about assembling a group of potential appointees, the five councilors do have some attractive options — the four candidates who were also on the Nov. 8 ballot and have significant support among city voters.

Katie LaFavor received 1,779 votes (51 fewer than Calder, based on preliminary results), Joe Johnson had 1,734, Damschen 1,328 and Donald Frank Cody 1,160 votes.

Once the council is up to its usual complement of seven, the group will need to address the financial challenges that City Manager Jonathan Cannon outlined during a special meeting of the city budget board Nov. 9.

Cannon said he’s concerned about the city’s ability to maintain the current budgets for the police and fire departments based on projected revenues and expenses over the next several years.

Although the trends are troubling, the new council should not act rashly. City residents have already seen the fire department’s capacity substantially reduced, from 16.25 full-time equivalents last year to 10.5 for the current fiscal year, which started July 1. That was due to the council’s unfortunate, and unnecessary, decision earlier this year to have the fire department cease ambulance service as of Sept. 30.

(The city has been replaced by Metro West, a private ambulance company.)

Unless the city can find new revenue sources for its general fund, which includes both the police and fire departments, there are limited options for curbing expenses. The police and fire departments, even with the significant cuts in the fire department, account for about 54% of the general fund expenses.

But the financial trends aren’t solely negative.

The beginning working capital in the general fund — money the city uses during the early part of the fiscal year, before property tax revenue begins to arrive — has increased from $1.19 million in 2019-20 to $2 million for the current fiscal year.

That doesn’t mean the city has almost $1 million readily available, of course — the city needs to maintain the working capital, and $2 million is not an unreasonable amount.

But the increase in that part of the general fund also means that councilors shouldn’t feel pressure to make dramatic cuts immediately.

They will have important discussions, however, both this winter, when Cannon hopes to reconvene the budget board, and in the spring of 2023 when councilors will adopt a budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year.