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Commissioners ask staff to study districting options, costs and civic-assembly approaches before setting a committee
Summary
The Board directed staff to produce comparative cost and timeline estimates for three committee-formation options to draw commissioner districts, including a civic-assembly-style process and lower-cost hybrid approaches; staff will return with estimates and mailing options.
Deschutes County commissioners on April 16 directed staff to research costs, timelines and design choices for forming a committee to create commissioner districts and to return with options to consider at a subsequent work session.
Staff presented three broad approaches: (a) a locally appointed committee (various appointment mixes by elected officials), (b) the state home-rule charter committee approach and (c) a civic assembly, modeled after a recent citizens’ assembly pilot that used a sortition (random selection) and outreach mailings. Commissioners expressed concerns about timing, cost and representativeness.
Strategic initiatives manager Jen Patterson and County Clerk Steve Dennison summarized options and existing budget availability. The civic assembly used in another jurisdiction had a roughly $250,000 price tag funded by a coalition of private and philanthropic contributions; the county currently had a $12,000 placeholder in its budget. Commissioners discussed committee size (staff presented a recommended range of 11–19 members), meeting cadence, the civic assembly’s five‑day full-time model and lower-cost alternatives such as a broader application process combined with in-house facilitation or student interns from local colleges.
Commissioners supported getting additional information before selecting a path. The Board asked staff to return with: (1) cost estimates for a professional facilitator versus in-house facilitation and use of trained local facilitators or students; (2) mailing-cost estimates for outreach options (postcard with QR code to all households, targeted mailings to voter households, or a larger packet like the civic assembly used elsewhere); (3) estimated timelines for each option, and (4) staffing needs and proposed committee size recommendations. The Board did not adopt a final committee composition or map-drawing method at the meeting but signaled openness to a hybrid approach that could combine representative civic input with appointments.
