La Grande City Council tackles possible changes to election process

LA GRANDE — Later this year La Grande residents will cast their votes for city councilors, but they may also be voting on how future members are elected.

The city council met to discuss proposed amendments to the city charter during a work session on Monday, April 15. The proposed revisions would change how future city council elections are run and how the city handles filling vacancies on the council, according to City Manager Robert Strope.

“This will go on the ballot this coming November,” he said.

Currently, candidates run for a specific position on the council — denoted as Position 2 through Position 7 (Position 1 is the mayor’s seat). However, those positions have no real distinction from one another. The proposed amendment would eliminate the council position numbers and residents would cast their votes for their top three candidates. The councilors’ terms are staggered so that three seats at a time are decided in an election.

“The intent is — top three vote getters win,” Strope said.

This change could help reduce confusion for both candidates and voters. It also could lessen the adversarial nature of the elections. It would, however, remove the element of a candidate running with the intent to face off against an incumbent or specific opponent.

The proposed amendment would also eliminate the language requiring a primary election. Strope explained that currently if three or more candidates file for any position, the city holds the primary election and then the top two candidates advance to the general election.

“This takes that completely out of the picture and I think makes it much simpler,” he said.

Special elections

Councilor David Glabe expressed some worry that with the elimination of the primary there could be a general election with an overwhelming number of candidates running.

The proposal would also add a new sentence, which states that the councilor “shall be elected and shall hold office until a qualified successor is elected or appointed.”

Strope said that this addition is specifically meant to address the time following Dec. 31 when council terms expire until the first meeting of January when new members are sworn into office. The current charter does not have any specific language to address what happens during this time period.

Under the current city charter, council resignations are filed one of two ways depending on the length remaining in that councilor’s term. If there is less than two years remaining on the term, the council appoints someone to fill the vacancy. If the remainder of the term is two or more years, the position has to be filled by election.

“The city would then have to pay for that special election,” Strope said.

However, if the election process is changed from candidates running for specific positions to candidates running for the council at large, filling vacancies in this manner could create confusion.

For example, Councilor Corrine Dutto posed the question, if there was an election where there were four councilor seats open — three regular four-year terms and a two-year term balance — and there were six people running, how would it be determined who got the two-year term?

The solution would be another amendment to the charter, which would make it so that the council always fills vacancies.

“The proposed change as crafted, any vacancy regardless of the balance of the term would be appointed by the city council for the remainder of that term,” Strope said. “And that’s what they do pretty much everywhere else in Union County.”

Financially responsible choice

Councilor Denise Wheeler initially expressed some hesitancy around this change, as did Dutto. Wheeler said that she did not feel comfortable with the council appointing someone to fill a position for that amount of time.

“That’s two years that the public doesn’t get to say anything,” she said.

Councilor Nicole Howard said this change would be the more financially responsible choice, especially given the cost of special elections.

“And we’re a represented body. I think we can represent well enough,” she said.

Mayor Justin Rock expressed similar sentiments, saying residents have elected the council and the mayor into a position to make decisions.

“Appointing someone is no different than any decision that we are making,” he said.

Wheeler was more comfortable with the possibility after learning that past appointments by the council to fill a vacancy have been a public process.

This language of the proposed charter amendment will need to be finalized and voted on by the council during the regular session meeting in June, Strope said. La Grande voters will then decide whether to adopt the charter amendment during the general election later in 2024.