Dian has put up a good post about the local democratic process as it is enacted here in Coquille and does a handy job of fingering the usually flawed logic delivered by the Coquille equivalent to the National Enquirer.

There is no need for me to elaborate on Dian’s thoughts here but I will say my view of the job of the council is to steward public money and assets and respect the will of the people. The council can listen to the opinion of hired staff but is supposed to instruct the city manager not be instructed.

The council is just too old and too complacent and too lethargic to really dig into the city’s problems. They are given a packet of information chosen by the city manager a couple of days before the council meeting and there is very little evidence they ever do any fact checking or analysis or serious exploration of alternatives of their own. They accept at blind faith that staff has done all that for them. Certainly as regards the handling of the police department and the water/sewer issue it is really hard to understand how staff has earned so much faith.

Now at the urging of staff, the council has put itself into a very uncomfortable position regarding the council seat. Thanks to ‘staff’ they will be damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Apparently, ‘staff’ hires the city attorney and continues to employ John Trew who has exhibited poor judgment in the past. Did he consider the liability to the city when ‘harpy’ was slandering and defaming a citizen during a council meeting? Apparently, a letter sent by the citizen’s (me) attorney alerting the council to the falsity of the statements and the precarious nature it put the city in was never forwarded from Trew to the council as it would have been in any other city.

Why does the council have such a low bar of expectations for the city manager? In the last two years I have attended many city council meetings around the state and country and I wish some of our council would do the same just to see the contrast and professionalism that can be attained. Surely, Coquille can do much better and replace those old fossils on the council.

Eldon points out in his letter the councils decision to throw out the election results for only three of the candidates.

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.

[emphasis mine]

We now have five new people that want three seats. What a great opportunity for change that would be!!!