Citizens of North Bend:
As you know, the City of North Bend is going through a process to locate and hire another City Administrator to replace Terrence O’Connor who will be departing in September as reported at this time. Since the Council elections don’t occur until November, the new City Administrator will be hired before we know if we will have new City Councilors including a new Mayor. This is an important point since new City Councilors would likely want to participate in the process of hiring the administrator they’ll be working with for the coming four years. In addition, and possibly most troubling, is that there is no process for involving the public in selecting the new city administrator. Traditionally, in public entities there is a process by which the individuals from the public can volunteer to sit on a selection committee of some type that makes a recommendation to the the City Council. This is very common in public entities as well as school districts with principal and superintendent positions. In order to gain trust and transparency in our city, we need to have involvement in this selection process, since the City Administrator works for us.
All citizens are highly encouraged to send an email to Mr. Erik Jensen at erik@jensen-strategies.com or contact your City Council members at 541-756-8500 (City Hall) to let them know how you feel about the issue, since we are all affected by this process. We thank you for your participation in the civic process.
Greg Aldridge
Chairman
NBCFGFG