BEND, OR -- Changes may be coming to how Bend elects its Mayor and City Councilors. The Council is poised to create a Charter Review Committee at its Wednesday meeting.
The group would consider whether future Councilors should be elected based on the geographic area in which they live, instead of the current "at large" system. Councilor Bill Moseley tells KBND News, "It's all fine to build an affordable housing complex or an apartment building on the east side, and generally we don't get any complaints. But, as soon as you want to put one next to the community college, everybody's up in arms. So, the feeling I get from representatives, generally, is that they're not represented well and they think a ward system would do a better job." He adds, "It's accountants and lawyers and doctors, people who are more likely to be activists, be in favor of a particular sub-set of issues around environmentalism, etc; and it kind of tips our politics and doesn't really represent issues that face everyone. I think that if most of the people sitting on the City Council were renters, and their rent was going up 30-40% a year, that we would get an entirely different set of policies coming from City Council than the ones that we have right now."
The other big charter change under consideration is whether to allow voters to select the city's Mayor. Moseley says, "I've just almost heard no dissension on whether or not we should have an elected Mayor. Currently, the Mayor is elected by the Council, itself. One of the problems with that is that it's very difficult for us to have a clear community vision that we can put before voters and say, 'is this where you want to go?' Instead, you get these kind of seven disparate voices and it's a little confusing, I think, to the average person living here."
If approved, the Charter Review Committee would be appointed almost immediately and would include neighborhood associations and Bend 2030. The group would make recommendations to Council in the coming months, then voters would need to approve any actual changes to the charter. That could happen as soon as November.
