Bend voters will decide in May whether they want to directly elect their mayor and give future city councilors a raise.

The two questions would be the first changes to Bend’s charter — a governing document that’s essentially the city’s constitution — since 1995. They’re the result of months of research and discussion by a city-appointed committee and hours of testimony and debate at Bend City Council meetings. The council rejected a third committee-proposed amendment to elect councilors from geographic wards.

Bend Mayor Casey Roats, who supports both charter changes, said they reflect Bend’s growth.

“If we were a sleepy little town where not much happened or changed, I could see leaving things as they are,” Roats said in a text message. “We are rapidly developing into the most important and dynamic city in the state.”

Elected mayor

If voters approve this change, Bend residents will elect their first mayor to a four-year term in November. Bend would join every other large Oregon city, as well as neighboring Redmond, in electing its top city official.

Currently, the council selects two of its members to serve as mayor and mayor pro tem every other January after elections. The mayor presides over meetings and works with the city manager to set council agendas. The mayor pro tem, now Sally Russell, fills in during the mayor’s absence.

Having councilors select a mayor can create an immediate point of contention between newly elected councilors and those who’ve served for two or more years, said Don Leonard, chairman of the Boyd Acres Neighborhood Association and a member of the two city committees that reviewed Bend’s charter and council compensation.

While Roats has some additional authority, he can’t veto council decisions, and his vote counts the same as any other councilor. That won’t change if Bend residents opt to directly elect their mayor.

Electing a mayor also won’t change Bend’s council-manager form of government, in which the council hires a city manager who handles day-to-day operations. However, charter review committee members expected an elected mayor with a longer term to take on more responsibility, setting a vision for Bend and serving on regional and statewide boards.

“I expect that the mayor position will evolve and become much stronger eventually, and we need to start planning for that now,” Leonard said.

Council compensation

Councilors last got a pay raise in 1995, when a revision to the city charter bumped their stipends from $50 a month to $200 a month. During that same period, the city population increased by close to 60,000.

Bend’s councilors now make the same amount as their colleagues in Redmond, which is about one-third the size of Bend, and Roats makes less than Redmond Mayor George Endicott. But because councilor pay is specified in the city’s charter, it takes a citywide vote to raise or lower stipends.

A ballot measure would remove pay from the charter entirely and allow it to be set by city ordinance, which requires only a majority vote of the council. If the amendment succeeds, council pay will increase to $533 per month and the mayor’s pay to $1,066 per month.

Roats, who was a city councilor for two years before being tapped to serve as mayor in January 2017, said being mayor is more involved and taxing than being a councilor.

“Who is mayor matters,” he said. “It sets the tone and pace for not only the council but the city government as well, for better or for worse. We get what we pay for as a community.”

Elected officials can’t vote to give themselves raises without an election between approving the raise and accepting it, so councilors who take the seats now held by Roats, Nathan Boddie and Barb Campbell would start receiving higher stipends in January. Russell, Justin Livingston, Bruce Abernethy and Bill Moseley would continue earning $200 a month until they or their replacements are sworn in following the 2020 election.

Livingston, who opposed letting councilors set their own pay, said he thinks voters should retain the right to vote on council compensation. He said he didn’t buy the argument from supporters of pay increases that higher stipends would cause more people from the east side of town, where he lives, to run.

“I don’t think the $300 difference will make that much of a difference,” he said. “Even child-care expenses would outstrip that amount.”

Printed voter information pamphlets that will be mailed to voters incorrectly have a question about a Bend fire and emergency services levy in place of the city compensation question, Deschutes County Clerk Nancy Blankenship said. The county corrected it on its online voter pamphlet and will include a flyer with the correct information with ballots, she said, and ballots have the correct information.

— Reporter: 541-633-2160; jshumway@bendbulletin.com