Before Getting Elected

On November 12, 2022, the city updated us with the skating rink project.  Not all details were revealed, but we have some juicy bits:

• ..."60-foot by 83-foot translucent event tent is expected to be installed on November 21st. We want to thank Travel Southern Oregon Coast (TSOC), a regional destination management organization focused on collaborating to enhance sustainable tourism, for its generous $30,000 grant for the purchase of the event tent for the City of North Bend.

• ...Representatives from Xtraice Rinks will be onsite to supervise the installation ( https://bit.ly/3toABUH) of the synthetic ice rink...[and] is expected to attract people of all ages....The indoor/outdoor...rink has a 12-year manufacturer’s warranty and 15-year lifespan, and will operate in the central downtown business district between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. Included in the price are skate shelves, 120 skates in various sizes, double skate sharpening machine, sharpening machine vacuum, rubber floor roll for skate changing area, Penguin and Bear skating aids, installation kit, and assembly supervision. 

• ...The synthetic ice skating rink purchase, as unanimously approved in a public City Council meeting, cost $74,418 plus shipping and was 100 percent paid for with transient lodging taxes, money collected when visitors book a stay at hotels and motels, bed and breakfast facilities..."

The city's report is here: https://www.northbendoregon.us/newsview.aspx?nid=7394 

Despite the name, North Bend Citizens for Good Faith Government, formerly "Concerned Citizens of North Bend", is a site with contents from James & Cece Rose when Mr. Rose ran for mayor in 2020 and used to endorse Mr. John Briggs for his unsuccessful run for mayor in 2022.  Mr. Briggs' campaign site is named "northbendoregon.com", dangerously close to the city's actual site: northbendoregon.us.

Gentlemen, If either of you folks remain interested in helping the city, please do get involved as a concerned citizen on one of the boards. I was disappointed that neither of you have chosen any level of service for our community since loosing the mayoral elections.

Note: February, 2023: Mr. Briggs mayoral campaign site has since been taken down. Thank you, Mr. Briggs.

Coos County League of Women Voter's Nort Bend Forums for Mayor and Council 

LWV hosted a forum in the North Bend City Council Chamber where they asked questions posed by citizens to the 3 council candidates who accepted the invitation as well as the 2 mayoral candidates. The incumbent, Larry Garboden, chose not to participate, unfortunately. 

This is the video the LWV put together. But I wanted to share my "speeches".  As expected, my delivery was rocky and time seemed to go twice as fast, so I didn't get quite all that's written here into the forum. Ah, well...

I stayed for the Mayor's Forum right after this. I encourage you to watch that! There was a remarkable difference between the two. As you'll read below, what I've regarded as successes over my experiences have always involved putting the team ahead of personal agendas and I think the two candidates are divided on that line as well.

I was be introduced with this:

"Jenny Jones came here at the end of 2013 after almost 20 years as an engineer and manager at software startups. She is a small business owner focusing on data analysis and other IT services. She has served on the North Bend Budget Committee as a citizen volunteer since 2019."

This is what I hoped the two speeches would be:

[Introductions on What Your Qualifications Are (2 min each)]

When we choose elected leaders, we hear a lot of “I” statements: “I know what’s broken.” “I know how to fix it.” But council work is a “we” activity: a small team makes choices together on behalf of us. 

Most times, the council has to make those decisions without a lot of the information they wished they had. 

In that type of situation, many heads collaborating together are *always* better than one. The future is cloudy. But each perspective a team incorporates wisps away a tiny bit of the clouds.  The more perspectives included, the easier to peer into the future. 

That’s why I think a council member's most important habits are about putting the team first: listening before speaking, double checking assumptions -- always putting the team before personal agendas.

There are many ways to learn to be a team player. In my case, work and volunteering in so many different ways 

has given me deep confidence in the power of better solutions through team work. 

Even when I was a boss lady, I found that team solutions were better than my own. We were often in deep disagreement. At home at night, I would wonder why my team didn’t see things as I did. 

But those team solutions were always better than the solutions I thought of alone.

There are other skills that help in this work: being good with numbers, knowing how public budgets work help. I happen to have that experience. 

But the truth is that our North Bend public servants, our city staff, are well suited to bring any new person up to speed quickly if one is willing to learn.

So, that's why I think that putting the team ahead of personal agenda and assumptions are the most important skills. That is what I bring to the table here.

Thank you for listening.

[Q&A Period: 1 minute each. Questions were incredibly difficult, mostly because they were phrased as  "how will *you* solve this?" when council is a team effort and no one will solve anything alone.  ]

[Closing Statement: Why should someone vote for you? (1 minute each)]

When I look around, I see a room full of intelligent faces who all have concerns and hopes for the community we share. 

We are neighbors.

We are literally in this together.

I know from experience that when teams include the full spectrum of diverse perspectives in their process, they improve outcomes, always.

We often think of elections in terms of winners and losers, but consider that some of us will "loose" this election. But don't you think we are all better off listening? Don't you think that we are all better informed now?

So, what I hope happens tonight is that each of you considers to serve in this way and to encourage your trusted friends and family to serve this way. 

Our democracy is *much* stronger when more of us step up, whether council, school board, or the host of other opportunities for average citizens like us to contribute. So consider it, Fellow North Benders!

Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening.

Your Experience/Qualifications 

While there are many ways to acquire these skills, an MS in Math and an MBA earned alongside a career in software engineering and entrepreneurship have afforded me deep experience with strategic decision making. I have learned to navigate the difficulties of collaborating even when in disagreement, sometimes very powerful, often through the lens of budgeting, more recently budgeting for public organizations.

What are the city's most urgent needs and goals and how would you address them?

Vacant residential and commercial lots, unaffordable housing for working and middle class people, and modern nomads (climate change, lack of affordable housing across the country) are top issues. If we can safely connect these together, however, there's opportunity to improve all three. Absent landlords choose: pay their fair share, lower rents or sell; willing worker nomads are connected to day labor; city property is leased to developers to build housing for long enough to make a profit. 

How would you strengthen the city's working relationships 

With the county, the state, and other tax districts on multi-jurisdictional issues like affordable housing, transportation, policing, social services and the economy?

Economic growth is about *diverse* business opportunities. Our DIY culture grows future micro producers, startups and small businesses. That's perfect for growing our tourism season from summer months to the full year would transform jobs in that area into work that actually supports people living here. Hand in hand would be more middle class housing and utilities access: remote workers look for beautiful places, happy residents grow service industry business and employment opportunity. 

All of our local news has been reporting just in time for election a summer 2022  kerfluffle between the city and the airport district. 

Unfortunately, that reporting has been extremely limited to the point where the reporting favors a particular opinion of the situation that doesn't appear true after I've read the letter that is at the center of the reporting.  It's disturbing that the private companies that own all of our media sources are so huge and the laws so scarce that such slanted reporting can happen. But I digress: here's what I understand after reading the letter: issues have boiled into a game of brinkmanship on both sides.

The City of North Bend and the Coos County Airport District have an Inter-Governmental Agreement whose heart is no a collaborative effort to serve the community better by working together. 

 The infamous  letter from City Administrator Milliron along with responses from the CCAD have been the subject of a number or articles and news stories by our local news outlets.  This letter, at its heart, concerns building a case that illustrates that CCAD isn't living up to its agreement. The details about the Senior Center are included in this letter along a few other complaints.  Here's the calendar of events:

1. The TSA runs periodic tests of our city responsiveness. On April 14, 2022 a little after midnight, our 911 call center got a report from the airport TSA that needed police attention.  

2. The city administrator's letter dated July 19, 2022, references this incident as a "false report" -- which it was  because it was a test TSA -- and in the *next* paragraph makes it clear that he views this as a problem with CCAD's policy, not an individual. 

   • 4th paragraph: "...At 12:09 on April, 2022, the Coos North 911 Dispatch Center received a false report..."

   • 5th paragraph: "I recognize the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA") and TSA require airports to test operational proceduers...I am unaware of any requirement to make a false report"

3. The airport district choose to escalate this and bring the incident under review, causing the TSA employee to be placed on Administrative Leave.

4. Months later, local candidates running for office started getting press in our local paper and on cable news. And local media started reporting on this, but most reference the letter yet never print or link to the letter, except for one report in October from KEZI which is where I downloaded the letter itself.

What we haven't heard much local news reporting on are some of the other questions raised in the letter: 

• why the airport is requesting bids from other local law enforcement but not North Bend for its services?

• why the airport insisted the city pay rent on the senior center when it was closed during the pandemic?

• why the airport won't return ownership of the senior center land to the city

• and of course, why did CCAD choose to initiate an investigation when all parties were aware that it was a required test?

Personally, I don't know why the CCAD put the TSA employee through that when Milliron's point wasn't pointing the finger at the employee. He was questioning the process and that's clear in the letter if you read both paragraphs.

KCBY's October 28th story about the TSA employee considering suing the city just in time for voting.  The story about the employee suing is particularly weird because he'd probably get more mileage out of suing the TSA or CCAD, since they put him on administrative leave, not the city.  I don't know why CCAD or TSA wouldn't have immediately dismissed this as something that needed to be investigated, since the city letter is quite clear. The employee was acting on instructions, not on his on design.

It bothers me that our local reporting is so scant that we don't even have the journalists needed to find a letter and give it to the public to make their own judgement. At this level, local "reporting" is just a really fancy telephone game mechanism, reporting on what someone else reported on who is reporting on what someone else said about something. It's a really easy system to abuse and it's a really easy system to get the wrong understanding of basic facts.

And after all that, I feel like the city's letter lacked a really interesting request that would help local folk and also bring business here. Why not figure out how to get the capital to allow the airport to accept smaller planes?  

I believe that flights for you and me and our neighbors at that airport don't happen that often not because of any security agreements, but because the federal contract to keep the airport open doesn't require the corporations participating to have any flights.

The government policy is built on the fallacy that airlines would want to have flights to stay competitive -- a free market principle that does not apply in the airline industry (too few competitors, no incentives for pleasing customers like you and me). In this case, the few corporations that "fly" out of there just have to have a minimum staff to get whatever incentives they receive. Minimum staff doesn't include commercial flights out of that airport very often. 

There's a reason why Amazon and FedEx use the US Postal Service for delivery in rural areas like ours: because it costs more to run the network than to contract out the network that exists. Only the US Postal Service is required to deliver to us out here. Amazon and FedEx will never have to delivery anything to us if they don't want to. 

Similarly, those corporations can stay at North Bend Airport, have a place and keep out competitors who might actually innovate around the lack of strategy those corporations have now. 

I thought, perhaps, that Southwest could use it's fleet of smaller planes to actually draw business to that airport. United appears to be the only carrier at this moment.  A NextDoor member of the North Bend forum informed me that he thought Southwest couldn't fly here because they need stairs and the airport isn't equipped. I was annoyed. 

So the business end of the airport was allowed to build it such that smaller airplanes couldn't use it but larger airplanes would never fill. 

And I think that, most likely, the city can't demand that the airport do anything to actually serve this community. The city just incurs the security costs at **our** expense...I agree with the city's decision to pursue payment for fair use. 

When I see cities like ours treating their agreements as business arrangements, as they should, I applaud their forward thinking.  If the airport had no responsibilities in the agreement or if they didn't feel they needed to hold up their responsibilities of the agreement yet still retain the benefits, why bother with the agreement? 

I've come to appreciate the "red tape" for creating a bank account for handling donations -- following campaign finance law. It's got a lot of steps that make you think twice about the headache each step of the way. The basic steps in Oregon are:

1. Pick your bank or credit union, speak with the new accounts people and get a verbal agreement that you can open an account there. 

2. Register your campaign with an SEL-220 form and mail it in or use the online process (I did this!)

3.  Get the Campaign ID and check daily on the status. When the status is Active, go back to your bank.

4. Complete the bank's process for this account. Some require EINs, as well, some do not. Some banks will help you create that EIN, some will not.

5. Deposit your funds if you have any.

6. See if your bank has Merchant services where you might be able to get a "Donate Now" button on your web site or a QR code if you have those. Some have them, some do not. They are not necessary, but it's nice to know what's possible.

Here are the detailed steps I did at the bank I chose:

1.  I found a bank in North Bend who would open the account for me.

2. I used "Sign Up Now" button on ORESTAR to start the process

https://secure.sos.state.or.us/oim/login

3. I immediately got a Campaign ID with a Pending status. I waited 1 business days that included a weekend and a Monday holiday before it became Active.

4. I went to my bank and started the account opening process.

5. My bank required an EIN, so we walked through creating one together: https://irs.ein-tax-id-number.com/application/

6. In creating the EIN, we were asked if I planned on filing a Form 8871 to become a non-profit. We checked yes because we didn't know until after creating the EIN that if you expect to have less than $25,000 per year in contributions. So, we didn't have to do that for city council, but now I was committed and had to follow through with it regarless.

7. At this point, I could deposit any contributions. But in order to get an official legal status for an election campaign, I also completed the federal forms needed.

8. Form 8871 must be started on line and *does* require an EIN, FYI. You need to look for the line "New User...? link on this page in order to create an account.

https://forms.irs.gov/app/pof/login/auth

9. When you complete this online form, you get a confirmation number you need with instructions to *mail in* a 2nd form:  8453-X  that requires that confirmation number among other things.  This takes time to process but ultimately gives you legal rights to an election campaign committee (non-profit for you, but not a charitable contribution for donors).

10. I presume I will eventually get the papers and the login information for the online part of looking at this process. 

That does it for the local election. Phew!! I am grateful to see that it would be hard to fabricate a bunch of numbers and information so that one could create something bogus, but it was daunting. Hopefully it will be easier for others who see this.

I was blown away when prior co-workers in the SWOCC union, AFT 3190, decided to endorse my campaign and fund me. It was my first donation. The World Link published their press release about it.

To be perfectly frank, I really didn't realize how much the donation would mean to me until I got the news about the union's decision. Up until that moment, this journey has been quite solitary, like running the 440 yard dash. A few coaches said, you can do it. And I started going through the process. But it's still a little lonely when the race started. 

Now it feels like I'm on the Mile Relay Team.  (Way better, in case anyone is wondering!)

Still, my *dream* continues to be an example where others get the push they need to try this process, as well. We absolutely need more people willing to invest the time and energy into our local governments. If we can form a resource pool of information that reveals opportunities and local support, we can make give a needed boost to our participatory democracy!

Voting is needed, critical, amazing! But, citizen involvement at this level is much needed.

No more diving rescue team for our area, even though the team volunteered. Bandon cut out an $80,000ish insurance policy and capital fund for equipment maintenance for our local volunteer diving rescue team who worked seamlessly with the Coast Guard. Now,  our community resource for drowning and the like are from the Coast Guard where rescue is limited to the surface of the water.  Now, our community bordered by water has no access to under water rescue, be it the sea or the lakes. Bandon shouldn't have been the only contributors. I don't blame them for dropping a service a much wider community benefited from. That said, I hope we can figure out a way to share the costs and get this back up.

Nature trail was community intention, disc golf is what community got. When the city ignored the requests and intention of the volunteers that brushed out the Simpson Park area they intended for a nature walk by adding disc golf, the city violated an unwritten rule of community civil service, in my opinion. Cutting out of the decision making conversation the ones who did the work and/or overruling the intention by volunteers did that work is not okay.  Perhaps there is some kind of scheduling (weekends for disc golf, for example) that can be compromised.

I'm very grateful that we have campaign finance laws and I hope that the current unlimited amounts individuals can contribute is changed. I can also say it was daunting for me to look into it. That said, League of Women Voters had a great worksheet that laid it out well. I hope to get it right here, too.

1.  My own money counts as a campaign contribution.

2. $750 per year: if I am paying my own way that means that I can spend up to $750/year. Above that and I have to file a "Committee to Elect Jenny Jones" form and report all contributions, including my own contributions to myself (that sounds pretty weird), as well as open a bank account for receiving contributions.

3. So far, this is what I've spent:

   • $96 for 2022 ($192/yr or $16/mo) for an election PO Box -- like separating business from personal mail, credit cards and the like, this seemed prudent.

   • $12: annual fee for the domain "electjennyjones.info" through my google site I can build via electjennyjones@gmail.com

   • $151: 30 yard signs made of 98% paper with a thin sheet of plastic on top. At $5/sign, they were much cheaper than the all-plastic ones of the non-recyclable type which made me feel good. However, none of our local sign makers could do this. I had to go to my old home town in Massachusetts to use Practical Image. That made me feel bad for not using local. But it would fun to touch base with someone in my old haunt.

   • $25: paper to print up QR code cards, 1-page sheets, etc.

Oregon has an excellent system for running for public office, in my humble opinion.  Any citizen living in a municipality can run and I think our participatory democracy would run a lot better for us if more of our individual community members ran and held public office even at the "lowest" levels like the city and county. Without people trying, those networks are incredibly fragile because most of the time the process goes like this (this is what happened to me, too): 

1. Someone is asked by a sitting council member to run, usually because that member's been on for decades wants to retire.

2. The someone goes through the petitioning process, somehow manages to get the minimum signatures if that's required like it is in North Bend or pays a fee like it is in other places and gets on the ballot.

3. The ballot is usually not "competitive", meaning the number of open sets is the same or more than the number of people running. 

Now, this run for me in fall 2022, that is not the case. Four of us are "competing" for two open seats.

But you can see how an "uncompetitive" ballot can easily and quickly lead to a fragile style "old boys network" simply because more people are not entering the process. I'm not discounting  the social bias we have that keeps opportunity away from people outside that network, but low participation for candidates reinforces that network...and I digress...

So, I started the first step of the process: contact North Bend City Recorder to pick up a packet of forms.  And there are a lot of forms. And yes, government forms are the official manifestation of "red tape" and they are a pain, I can say, but I do feel like the forms are required. Don't we want to ensure that someone is, say, living in the area where they are getting elected. Or, a citizen of that state or the US? Don't we want to know exactly how and how much any election funds are getting collected? Don't we want to know who the money is coming from? I'm going to presume we all say yes.

Dealing with the forms was both daunting and reminiscent of the early days after 9-11 where I was inconvenienced, perhaps, but grateful for the increased airport security.

After getting my packet from the city recorder, I had to start collecting signatures. This is definitely **embarrassing**. For most of us, self-promotion is difficult at best, as it is with me. I looked for the small ways to get some joy out of the process:

• putting together the "portable table" made of a binder that enabled me to have my required documentation and allow people to easily sign as well as show what the petition was about from anyone passing by.

• I clipped a few small "cards" with a QR code for people to scan with smart phones along with the web site so I could invite people to learn more while not taking up too much time. I found that I gave them a card first.

• Best Take Away: I started imagining some kind of local network of people where we could mentor one another with a goal of seeing a lot more people successfully navigate getting onto council, then started speaking about that to people while they were signing. More perspectives, more people serving does our community well!

But campaigning, well that just ups the embarrassment game. 

In August, after finding out that this election, unusually, was competitive (4 people competing for 2 open council seats), I realized that I would have to actually campaign to win. Not only was I not sure if I wanted to win, but I knew this meant time and at least a little money and lots more public outings. Ugh! 

And it doesn't get better, I don't think. It's embarrassing. I don't really want to interrupt people's day. I feel a little weird and goofy on any given day, much less a day where I am interacting with lots of people I don't already know.

Yea, that's all I've got to say about campaigning.

I love that Oregon has campaign finance laws, but it's still hard to figure it all out.  When I attended a workshop put on by Coos County's League of Women Voters about running for office, they had some great handouts that give you an idea and Oregon has some great online information about running for office, too.

LWV is an excellent example of how an organization can have a seemingly exclusive charter, after all *women* is in the name. Yet their organization is entirely focused on increasing participation of all people at all levels of our participatory democracy, which literally crumbles even if people vote, because if people *just* vote, we are still at the mercy of a few people picking our candidates whole cloth. We need to participate at all levels.

This is what I learned in a nutshell:

All citizens with residency in a municipality or county can run for local office, starting with meeting the city recorder or county clerk for official applications and petitions. The state also has online information walking you through it.

Ask yourselves and your trusted friends: Whom should we support? Should we run? Could we run? If not this year, next. If not next, when?

Specifically, North Bend City Recorder manages the mayoral and council election process that starts with official applications and packets in June or July and completed petitions by mid-August every election year. City Council or Mayoral candidates need signatures and addresses from 50 North Bend voters in order to appear on our ballots. 

Each voter -- you -- is limited to supporting *one* city council member and *one* mayoral candidate.  The first petition to get a particular voter's support is the one counted, all other references to that voter's name are pulled off from other lists. 

In the June budget meetings, I heard about the $75,000 for a portable, acrylic skating rink.  At first hearing, I didn't like it. Then I asked a few questions, got answers and changed my mind:

• The money is **not** coming from tax payers. It's coming from vacationers and other people who pay a lodging tax. I have no problem with people who come here paying a little extra to stay in our excellent community.  I believe, as well, that this money must be spend on tourism supporting activities.

• The skating rink is portable and has high resale value if it doesn't work out. The company that makes these beasts works with NYC and other cities who do this every year.  So, if it doesn't work out here, we can sell it back and at least get something.

• The rink is affordable for everyone, including those of us that live here unlike, say, Bandon Dunes golfing or access to the airport for a private jet. That's good for everyone who lives here, too, not just wealthy tourists.

• The rink is a recreational activity that can happen outside of the summer. In my opinion, anything we can do to grow the tourist season is a step in the right directly.

• The rink comes with 100 pairs of skates of all sizes.

• The rink is portable, so we can try a few places.

All strategic decision like this are made with incomplete information. It's a boat in the ocean, not a path up a mountain -- a guess without any probability models to guide us.  I think this is a really interesting, new guess and I hope it works out.

After attending and really enjoying three years of Budget Committee meetings (which is literally 2-3 evenings in June, that's it!), I'd found a deep appreciation for our city leaders and staff.  Apparently, my participation was appreciated as well for shortly after the final meeting several participants asked me to run. 

I live with a feeling of "be the change if you want a change", so I decided to jump in and see what happens. I know my sweetie will still love me regardless of what happens, so we will see. But I wondered about why I was asked.  And as I mused over the meetings, some possible reason came to mind.

I choose collaboration and inquiry over demands and criticism as *how* to collect information and make decisions. As a manager of a failing department (16 people had come and gone in less than 1 year for a department of 8), I found that treating others as I wanted to be treated was key in turning that department around and doing so quite quickly.  I found that operating that way expresses itself like this: ask questions before/during/after concluding anything, ask the hard questions without assumptions, wait to ask questions until you are clear and calm if you find any part of the situation upsetting. Always be willing to learn more and update response or path. After all, my plans never go as planned and I do not know a single person who can honestly claim that, so why not anticipate that more information will come to light and require adjustments most likely.

As it happens, I've rubbed elbows and/or worked directly with 1 billionaire and dozens of millionaires in my 18 year odyssey in the software startup world. In all that time, those business leaders knew very little about how their organizations ran, much less how the money flowed in comparison to how well-prepared North Bend city leaders were every year during those meetings. 

 Many of the business leaders I knew were wildly successful.  And there was little to no difference in how well the successful business leaders knew how their business ran than unsuccessful. I began to realize the luck of the draw of many, most perhaps, of our wealthiest who "earned every penny".  I, and all of my co-workers and bosses, were part of the uncounted masses who helped the person who just happened to be at the top at that moment earn every one of those pennies those people attributed to themselves.