Why not wait 2 weeks?

Baker City voters have elected seven city councilors whose duties include spending taxpayers' money.

In most cases those voters don't have a direct role in deciding how elected representatives dole out the dollars.

That's the way representative government works: We elect people to represent us, and to spend our taxes, and if we dislike their decisions we can vote for someone else at the next election.

Yet voters expect, and rightfully so, that in exchange for the granting of such broad authority, their elected officials, no matter their final decision, always will value taxpayers' opinions.

This is especially so when officials consider spending large sums of money.

The City Council's decision on Feb. 26 to buy a building for the police department, at an estimated cost of $716,000, not including interest on a loan, qualifies as a large sum. City government as a whole spent about $6.4 million last fiscal year.

In this case the City Council and city staff failed to prove that they're interested in what citizens think about a building purchase that will be one of the city's larger one-time expenditures in the past few decades.

To be clear: We're not implying that the Council made a bad financial decision. We don't think the city will have to sacrifice any public services to pay for the police department.

What bothers us is that the City Council voted to buy the building at 1768 Auburn Ave. just 2 months after councilors first discussed the possible purchase.

Neither that discussion, nor a second one that took place during the Council's Feb. 12 meeting, was listed on the meeting agenda, so residents who are interested in the topic had no way to know councilors would be talking about it.

In fact, most of the Dec. 12 discussion, and the whole of the Feb. 12 discussion, took place during an executive session, from which the public is excluded as allowed under Oregon's public meetings law.

Then, during the public portion of the Council's Feb. 26 meeting, city officials laid out their case for buying the Auburn Avenue building.

Until then, the city had said so little, publicly, about its proposal that residents could hardly have formed well-considered opinions about the city's plan to buy the building.

And unfortunately, they never had the chance to do so.

Less than half an hour after city officials finished their presentation on Feb. 26, the Council voted 3-2 to authorize City Manager Steve Brocato to negotiate a deal with the building's owners.

The three councilors who voted "yes" obviously believe they know enough about the proposal to make an informed decision to commit hundreds of thousands of the city's dollars.

But those councilors, unlike their constituents, had heard much of the presentation during the earlier meetings that were closed to the public.

Councilors have the authority to buy the building, regardless of what their constituents say.

But councilors also have an obligation — a duty, actually — to give their constituents a real chance to toss in their two cents about what could amount to a million-dollar decision.

Councilors could have accomplished this by delaying their vote and scheduling a public hearing during their next meeting, on March 11.

We don't believe a two-week wait would have nixed the sale of the building.

But two weeks is sufficient time for residents to digest the considerable volume of information that Police Chief Wyn Lohner, Fire Chief Jim Price and other officials presented on Feb. 26, and for citizens to decide whether they want to express their opinions to councilors during a hearing.

Had councilors postponed their vote until March 11, we suspect their decision on that day would have been the same as it was on Feb. 26.

That's fine.

We elected councilors to make such decisions.

But for the measly cost of a fortnight, they could have assuaged some of their constituents who wonder whether their opinions, except on election day, truly count.