‘Convoluted’ editorial muddies mayoral issue

Editor:

Thirteen towns and cities in Linn County have mayors. In every one except Sweet Home and

Millersburg (for those keeping score that is 11 of 13), the mayor is elected by the voters of the city… NOT appointed by a board or City Council. I obtained this information by calling Oregon and Linn County Elections Offices.

Each and every candidate for City Council in the 2024 candidates’ forum

answered “Yes” when asked if they supported the notion of changing Sweet Home City Charter to include a mayor elected by voters rather than appointed by City Council. There is already an initiative petition prepared for circulation which has straight-forward language that simply alters our mayor selection process through election by the voters, and deleting language whereby the mayor is selected by the City Council.

Simple and clean. There is nothing expanding or diluting any of the powers or duties of the position of mayor.

I was very disappointed in the unsigned editorial in last week’s New Era published on Jan. 29. If

its intent was to muddy the proverbial waters on the issue of voters versus City Council selection of the mayor, the writer(s) should be proud, because it appears they wandered way into the weeds. The editorial conflated and projected fears and concerns into the simple question of voter versus appointment of the mayor by including topics not related to “elected vs. appointed.”

Those issues are different subject matter and separate conversations. The editorial gave a “civics lesson” explaining some of the types of city governments, the type we have, and the percentage of cities that have our type in the US, and how that percentage grew over a 10-year period.

The civics lesson provided by the editorial, while educational, had nothing to do with the simple issue of elected versus appointed mayors. A civics lesson might be useful and instructive if, instead, it had contained percentages of mayors in (say) Linn County Oregon that have voter elected mayors versus appointed ones, as I provided in my opening sentences.

This information might actually prove useful to Sweet Home residents.

Further, the opinion suggests that the mayor (under our current system) need only convince the majority of City Council to support them. That is not true. A mayoral candidate under our current system need only convince half of the other six councilors to support them, and then add their own vote for themselves to create a majority.

That is an issue that causes many to not like our current system, because there at least is an illusion (if not reality) that the winning candidate is now “owing” those who supported them. People who favor a mayor elected by the voters would prefer the mayor be accountable (owing) to them instead of three people on council.

The editorial further conflates the issue by bringing in complaints about City Councilors not being visible in public into this when it has nothing to do with the method of selection of our mayor. Those public admonitions of CC members from the public relate to the desire of some SH residents to have community meetings in different areas of town and being more visible.

Then the editorial defends our current Mayor, Susan Coleman as having been “very involved” and frequently seen at public events. To my knowledge, nobody has accused Mayor Coleman of not being involved and visible. It is very evident that she is. The notion of whether or not

the mayor should be elected by voters or appointed (selected/elected) by City Council has nothing to do with Mayor Coleman, and whether or not she has been a fine mayor.

I believe advocates of an elected mayor simply believe that it is more democratic, and creates direct accountability to the voters rather than to the council. Again, simple and clean.

Mayor Coleman has selected a Charter Review Committee to look at the potential for changes in the City Charter, to include the method of mayor selection. I am one of the “citizen” members of this “advisory” committee. The committee has not yet met, but will be setting up meetings soon.

I have no idea what our committee will come up with or recommend. The above is my opinion, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of anyone else who is on committee, as I have not shared this opinion until now, in this writing.

I wrote this because last week’s editorial presented this simple, clean notion in a convoluted and complicated manner. I hope I clarified the true simplicity of current citizens’ effort.

Gary Jarvis
Sweet Home

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