News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
A slate of candidates won the three open seats on the Sisters City Council in the November 4 election.
Lon Kellstrom won 551 votes to hold his seat. Pat Thompson received 449 and Jerry Bogart earned a seat with 440 votes. Thompson and Kellstrom earned four-year terms; Bogart will serve for two years.
Incumbent Mayor Brad Boyd ended up with 429 votes; Wendy Holzman received 425 votes. There were 554 undervotes in the council election, where a voter turned in a ballot but did not cast a vote for any or all of the candidates. The substantial undervote may indicate that many voters voted for only one candidate instead of voting for three of the five running.
The race marked unprecedented campaign efforts spearheaded by two Political Action Committees (PACs). Citizens for Sisters, which backed Kellstrom, Thompson and Bogart, took in $11,100 in campaign contributions, almost entirely from individuals or groups associated with the building and real estate industries.
Friends of Sisters, a PAC that supported Boyd and Holzman, raised $2,650, mostly in contributions of $100 or less that did not require registering of a donor's name. A few larger contributions up to $200 were made by individuals.
Lon Kellstrom drew by far the largest bloc of votes. The incumbent councilor said that he and the other two winners plan to "basically just live up to our election message: protect public resources and welcome economic development."
He thinks the first step for the council should be to "start talking to EDCO (Economic Development for Central Oregon, an agency that recruits business into the region and supports economic development projects)" and invite others to participate.
Thompson echoed the commitment to fulfilling the campaign message, but he declined to offer specific programs before he takes his seat in January.
"I don't have it planned out yet," he said.
Thompson said his first steps will be to "make sure I'm up to speed on all the things that are currently council priorities."
He expressed gratitude for the support of voters and said he was pleased at the level of participation.
"It's not official yet, but I'm sure the turnout in Sisters was over 90 percent," he said.
(Official precinct breakdowns and turnout numbers will not be available until the election is certified at the end of this month).
Bogart is ready to act swiftly.
"We want to hit the ground running in January," he said. "We want to get the stakeholders together and let them know we're in the economic development business. That's our first step. The key is just to get it on everyone's radar."
Bogart is a strong advocate of Sisters creating a position of Economic Development Director to recruit businesses and advocate for them through the planning process with the city.
He said he would like to talk to Bud Prince, who retired from a similar position in Redmond.
"If he would come on board, that would be awesome," Bogart said.
Bogart attributed the victory of his slate of candidates to "the great grassroots support that we got."
He said candidates and campaign activists personally mailed every voter in the city and he believes that personal touch meant a lot.
"We worked hard," he said. "We walked around a lot. I think we ran a pretty good campaign. It's not easy to beat the incumbent mayor, especially when he's done a pretty good job."
That incumbent mayor, Brad Boyd, expressed disappointment at the outcome, but acknowledged that the voters had expressed their will.
"If the citizens want a council that is dominated by development and building interests, I am not the appropriate mayor," he told The Nugget.
Boyd said he is not sure whether he will continue involvement in city politics and government or not.
Wendy Holzman, while not certain whether she will run again for a council seat, intends to remain active in the city.
She is the liaison with the council for the Committee for Citizen Involvement and she intends to remain active in that committee. She hopes to see its role and activities further defined in coming months.
"I really like this stuff and it's important," she said.
Holzman expressed some concern at the advent of PACs and an unprecedented level of spending on the campaign.
"Is this going to be a precedent in Sisters?" she asked. "This election has kind of changed Sisters in how we've done our city council elections."
She is concerned that potential candidates will be discouraged by the belief that they will have to raise thousands of dollars to compete.
"Maybe this is the new reality for Sisters," she said.
In addition to her CCI involvement, Holzman has been part of the planning process for the new Transportation Systems Plan. A consensus has built around the idea of an alternate route to take through traffic off Cascade Avenue (see "Consensus building toward traffic solution," The Nugget, November 5, page 1).
Neither Kellstrom nor the two new councilors are inclined to challenge that consensus. All, however, are concerned about the details of implementation, especially the funding of the estimated $41 million project.
For his part, Bogart sees an immediate need: "We've got to get some traffic control at both ends of town as quickly as possible."
Kellstrom acknowledges that victory at the polls has put the burden of action on the slate of candidates - now councilors.
"Now that we've got the chance," he said, "we'd better do what we said we're going to do."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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