The City of Bend Charter is clear: It says a councilor must have resided within the city limits for the 12 months immediately preceding his or her election to office. But it appears that city council hopeful Casey Roats, who was born and raised in Bend, may not qualify for that very basic threshold.
By his own admission, Roats only has been living within city limits for about two weeks out of the past year.
On Monday morning, accusations were leveled that Roats is not qualified to serve on City Council and may be running afoul of the law.
“He was not residing in the city limits of Bend, and is therefore not qualified to run for city council,” explained Charlie Ringo, a former state senator, local attorney and founder of Bend Good Government Committee, a PAC supporting candidates including Roats’ opponent Lisa Seales. “Further,” Ringo continued in an interview with the Source, “Roat’s Candidate Filing statement was not accurate and constitutes a felony.”
In response, Roats told the Source that he sold his Bend home last September and moved his family into his parents’ home east of the City while he built a new home near the Bend office of Roats Water Systems, where he works as owner/operator. He said that though he wasn’t technically residing within city limits from October 2013 to October 2014, he spent the majority of his waking hours in Bend, working and volunteering on infrastructure advisory committees.
He pointed out that he did not rent or own a residence outside the city during that time and argued that regardless of where he laid his head, his heart remained in Bend.
The full story—with interviews from Mayor Jim Clinton and city councilors’ reactions—will run in this week’s edition, on stands and online tomorrow.
This article appears in Oct 16-22, 2014.
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i thought republicans were against voter fraud, not committing it
i want to see Casey Roat’s birth certificate hahahaha!
Sounds like a job for the City Attorney. I don;t think the charter refers to where your heart may be. He didn’t qualify for those committees he sat on either. Roats clearly doesn’t give a damn about city laws.
Really? This is the kind of bs small town politics crap that defines our rotten system. Isn’t Mr. Roats like a 4th generation Bender? So he sells his house in Bend, then moves right outside the city line, while building a house in Bend, and running a business in Bend, and serving on committees in a end, and now this rabble rouser of a PAC lawyer claims he’s committed a felony. A felony? Seriously? Talk about a waste of the pixels it takes to display this article.
I get that this is gotcha politics, and as a candidate it’s easy to start throwing mud just to win a race, but this is something that has nothing to do with who is the best candidate and will best serve Bend. As far as residency laws to for candidacy, I’m pretty sure that the fact that he sold his house in Bend and immediately began construction on a house in Bend provides enough of an argument that he’s as much a Bender as anyone.
Congrats guys. You just gave me one more reason to despise the political process and the lapdog media that waits breathlessly in the wings to exploit bullcrap issues that have nothing to do with the question of who is best for the job.
It’s funny, if it was one of the other candidates, I’d be thinking this isn’t a big deal and feel sorry for them (and Bend) if it turned out bad. But after watching the League of Women Voters debate, I really get the sense that stuff like this will be happening all the time if Roats is elected. His explanation on TV tonight just doesn’t ring true. He acts like he can do what he wants and then talk his way out of it. Problem is, he can’t. He makes some weird analogy about living in a tent vs sleeping in a convenient house outside city limits. In the end, the law will be the law. The only thing he can do is cooperate and hope for the best because whatever is decided will affect others. All the smart mouthed talking in the world should make no difference. If the law says he’s okay, then he is. If not, he made a mistake and he needs to live with it.