Deschutes County commissioners are considering a map that, if voter-approved, would divide the county into five voting districts.

Last year, voters decided to increase the size of the county commission from three to five seats. The commission’s Dec. 3 meeting is the next step in the effort to create representative districts for those elected positions, which are currently at-large.

The proposed map for districts could shape the future of decision-making and political power in this politically diverse county.

Commission seats became non-partisan through a 2022 ballot measure, but the board has had a Republican majority for at least a decade. Commissioners Patti Adair and Tony DeBone were initially elected as Republicans and Commissioner Phil Chang first secured his seat as a Democrat.

Chang said he won’t be voting in favor of the proposed district map. In an interview with OPB, he called it “gerrymandered” and said it would likely lead to a continued Republican majority on the board, despite the party representing a minority of registered voters in the county.

Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans countywide. There are even more non-affiliated voters, a designation people automatically receive when they get a driver’s license.

DeBone and Adair have led the effort to tie board seats to districts. In July, the commission appointed a District Mapping Advisory Committee and instructed it to create five representative districts with no at-large districts. The mapping committee narrowly approved the final map on Nov. 12 by a 4-3 vote.

Under the proposed map, one county commissioner would represent Sisters, another Redmond, another La Pine, and two people would represent most of Bend.

DeBone said in an interview that it would be good to have five representative districts, both for simplicity and for smaller Central Oregon communities such as La Pine and Sisters to have dedicated representation.

George Endicott, a former mayor of Redmond, told the county committee in an email that the proposed map seemed to be a “fair and equitable representation of what we need in the county to represent the residents.”

A group of residents from Sisters and Bend recently protested the mapping process and the push to create districts.

Pete Shepherd, a resident of Sisters, wrote in a public comment that the effort to “disintegrate our community into five fragments” divides rather than unites the county.

County commissioners could decide Wednesday to hold a public hearing to get more input on the proposed map, or they could vote to send it to the May 2026 ballot.

Adair did not respond to OPB’s request for comment and DeBone would not say what action he planned to take at Wednesday’s meeting.

“The voters, in the end, would need to accept this map or not,” DeBone said.

If voters approve the map, Deschutes County Clerk Steve Dennison said the change would take effect as early as the 2028 election cycle.

Almost all Oregon counties that are currently represented by five commissioners have districts, according to the Association of Oregon Counties.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/12/02/deschutes-county-map-future-elections/