A letter sent to each of the city councilors and the mayor reproduced below will be published in the upcoming Coquille valley Sentinel questioning the reasoning and legality of invalidating election results because of the ineligibility of one candidate.

To the Coquille City Council:
During the Special Council Session in the first part of this month, the Council was advised by the City Manager that the Council had the legal authority and responsibility to select a replacement for Kathy Hagen’s seat on the City Council. He advised that this controlling authority originated in City Charter sections 32 and 33, and flowed through the City Council Procedural Rules, section 17, a and b., which stipulates that applicants to fill a vacancy will be interviewed by the Council and the Council will decide who to select for the position.
These City Charter sections and Procedural Rules were deemed to be the controlling authority on the presumption that Kathy Hagen actually won re-election to her City Council seat and therefore had something to resign from for the 4 year period starting January 2009; however, Section 12 of the City Charter states that no person shall be eligible for a city elective office unless at the time of the election he or she meets the State Constitution requirements and has also resided within the City Limits for the 12 months immediately preceding the election.
Since Kathy Hagen moved out of the City after filing for re-election, but before the election took place, even though her name appeared on the ballot, she did not meet the residency requirement, and therefore did not qualify to stand for election at the time of the election, and therefore cannot be considered to have re-won her seat on the City Council. Since she did not officially win re-election, her subsequent resignation can only be considered to apply to the remainder of this term of office, and not to the 4 year term commencing in January 2009.
Further, there appears to be nothing in the City Charter, let alone the City Council Procedural Rules, that grants authority to the City Council to ignore or unilaterally invalidate the election results entirely, just because one candidate was determined to have been ineligible at the time of the election. In other words, there is no provision at all which renders any of the other candidates ineligible for election to the City council merely because Kathy Hagen was ineligible for election.
If there had been a provision allowing the City Council to disregard the election results as they apply to some of the candidates, then they would probably apply to all the candidates, including the 2 currently presumed to have won re-election, being Corky Daniels and Fran Capehart, but no one appears to be challenging their re-elections.
Barring any contrary legal authority in the State Constitution, I believe the election results should be obtained in one of two ways:
draw a line through Kathy Hagen’s name and vote tally and select the top vote getter from the remaining 3 candidates, or have a run-off election.

The letter is written by Eldon Rollins and was delivered to City Hall on earlier today. Additionally, I have forwarded the pertinent sections of the city elections manual, city charter and rule book to Rural Organizing Project which specializes in just such sticky democracy process problems. In turn, ROP is having the charter reviewed by lawyers who specialize in election law to get their interpretation of this unusual circumstance. Perhaps, some local lawyers may wish to render an opinion on the matter as well.