Our endorsements for City Council

Voters can change the roster of the Baker City Council a little or a lot in the Nov. 4 election.

We recommend the latter.

Nine candidates are vying for four vacancies on the seven-member City Council.

Three of the four members of the Baker City Herald’s editorial board had half-hour interviews with eight of those candidates during the past few weeks (Bill Todd declined our invitation).

Editorial board members who attended those interviews are: Kari Borgen, the newspaper’s publisher; Jayson Jacoby, the editor; and Chris Collins, the police and schools reporter. The board’s other member, reporter Mike Ferguson, did not attend candidate interviews because he writes news stories about the City Council and so, in the interest of preserving his objectivity, he was not involved in the board’s decision about endorsing candidates.

We urge residents to give their votes to this quartet: Aletha Bonebrake, Clair Button, Jeremy Gilpin and Milo Pope.

Voters will quickly notice, we suspect, that we are not endorsing any of the three incumbents: Sam Bass, Gail Duman and Terry Schumacher.

We don’t intend, however, to imply that we believe none of those three, nor Marna Fahrney, the other candidate we interviewed, has been or could be a competent city councilor.

In fact, we’re confident that each of the eight candidates we talked with is capable of serving Baker City residents nobly and well. We commend all nine candidates for demonstrating their commitment to and love for this city by seeking an important, but often thankless, job.

We’re sure, in any case, that none of them did it for the $150 per year salary.

Although familiarity with the job is a worthwhile asset for any city councilor, we believe that the Baker City Council would benefit more from the infusion of new members and their different perspectives than it would from retaining the experience of the trio of incumbents on the ballot.

Specifically, we think it’s more likely that Bonebrake, Button, Gilpin and Pope will rapidly learn what they need to do the job than it is that the current City Council will soon mend the personality conflicts and policy disputes that have marred several meetings and disenchanted many residents during the past year.

Aletha Bonebrake is an ideal candidate to help the City Council reverse that trend.

It’s no coincidence that Bonebrake was picked to serve as the moderator at candidate forums during past elections.

Her professional record also impresses us. Bonebrake, who retired last year as Baker County library director, proved during her 21-year tenure that she’s able to work within a budget — and to work with a board of directors.

Bonebrake played a crucial role in persuading voters to pass a property tax levy that expanded the library. Her experience could prove vital for the city, which might need to ask voters to approve a similar levy to pay for work at the sewer lagoons or to smooth streets.

Bonebrake also emphasized that councilors should be made aware when the city makes a major purchase — such as buying a car recently — even if the city manager, as in that case, has the authority to buy the car.

Clair Button intrigued us with his ideas about getting more people involved in setting the City Council’s agenda.

Among those ideas is scheduling meetings during which councilors won’t make any decisions, but will invite citizens to talk about issues that they’re interested in or worried about.

Button, a retired BLM botanist, also proposes adding a public forum to the city’s Web site, so residents can express their opinions online.

Button thinks the city should, in deciding how to spend taxpayers’ dollars, look three to five years in the future. That’s wise — and it’s a concept City Manager Steve Brocato has promoted as well.

Button also hopes the City Council will use the success of the historic downtown district as a model for revitalizing other commercial areas such as Broadway and 10th streets.

We hope Jeremy Gilpin has a chance to work on parts of his platform, in particular forging partnerships with the Baker School District, Blue Mountain Community College and potentially other partners to train residents for the types of jobs that are most likely to be added to the city’s economy.

We agree with Gilpin that ideally those jobs would be filled by current residents rather than by newcomers, whose arrival could further stress the city’s water and sewer systems and streets and possibly hasten the need for expensive upgrades.

Gilpin’s financial expertise — he’s a commercial loan officer at Community Bank — would be a boon to the City Council during its budget deliberations.

And we share his contention that the city needs a more cohesive, businesslike City Council whose members understand that citizens expect that the Council, not the city manager and staff, will have the final say on vital matters.

We’ve thought more than a few times during the past year that what the City Council needs is a judge.

Well, we’d be satisfied with retired Circuit Court Judge Milo Pope.

Pope told us he has little use for what he termed “petty bickering.” We trust Pope would act as a bulwark against such nonsense, and would help the City Council concentrate on its agenda.

We’re confident that Pope, who has presided over dozens of trials and listened to testimony from all sorts of experts, has the valuable ability to quickly grasp the essence of complex topics.

Besides, Pope described himself as a “hopeless optimist.”

No City Council can ever have too many of those.