Your Turn: Getting Involved

Community Leadership As Volunteer, Voting, Running for Office

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?

We live in a time of great change and in particular leadership roles are turning over to the next voices coming from people new to public service and younger generations.

If you recognize this as opportunity for yourself or others whom you believe in, start participating more directly. There's room for every viewpoint, particularly on a city council or county commission. True collaborative decision-making with a diverse spectrum of perspectives is the road to a brighter future.

All citizens with residency in a municipality or county volunteer for a number of boards, commissions and committees, as well as 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.

City of North Bend: How can you learn & engage?

Volunteer in City Government
Report a Concern
Get E-mail Notifications
Learn About Municipal Elections
Attend Meetings
Sign up for Coos County emergency texts, if you haven't already!

Ever wonder where your North Bend property tax dollars go?

From City Administrator, David Milliron on Linkedin: "The city operates on a strict set of financial controls beyond the State of Oregon's requirement for an annual balanced budget. Jessica Terra, the city's Finance Director at one time, unraveled the complexity of the budgeting process during the February 16, 2022, "Wednesday Business Connection" hosted by the Bay Area Chamber of Commerce. Listen as Jessica helps interested North Benders understand and participate in the city's budget process. During her presentation, she will outline the components of the city budget, the timelines, and procedures for adopting it and give an overview of how the city raises revenues and how those revenues are spent. If you want to understand better North Bend's budget and how your tax dollars are spent, this is a must-watch presentation! "

Voting and Running for Office in North Bend and Beyond...

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.

Other offices, like School Boards are managed through the county.

Coos County Candidate Filing Forms

Learn more about running for office and serving in office:

Get Informed About Candidates:
- Vote411.org is run by League of Women Voters and is non-partisan.
- Oregon Voting & Election Guides

Oregon Voting is Secure: every vote counts and never lets anyone vote more than once.

Oregon's vote-by-mail ballot bar codes perform two **essential** functions at once: ensure our privacy and ensure that nobody can vote more than once, even as they receive and potentially turn in multiple ballots. Voting more than once is a felony with a $10,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison, but it is also literally *impossible* to vote more than once with Oregon's mail-in-voting system.