Thursday’s editorial in the Gazette-Times urges readers to at least think about running for Corvallis mayor or the City Council.

In the meantime, I checked Wednesday afternoon with Kathy Louie, who — among other duties — functions as the city’s

elections officer for a roundup of who’s filed thus far.

The city asks potential candidates to file a declaration of intent to run. Now, that doesn’t mean that everyone who files that declaration will be on the November ballot — for starters, candidates then need to go out and gather signatures from voters: 100 for the mayor’s race and 20 for council races. As I understand it, the deadline for submitting those signatures to the county Elections Office is Aug. 3.

So that means we’ve got more than two weeks for the field to sort itself out. Here’s the lineup thus far:

Mayor: Julie Manning has filed the declaration. I ran into Rob Gandara at City Hall, and he said he’ll make a decision about that race sometime this week. Gandara also has filed a prospective petition for the Ward 5 council race — if he moves in that direction, that would set up a rematch of his race against incumbent Mike Beilstein, who has filed his declaration and has his signatures submitted to the county.

Ward 1: Incumbent Mark O’Brien has filed the declaration.

Ward 2: Roen Hogg and Scott Clifford have filed declarations to seek the seat being vacated by Trish Daniels.

Ward 3: Incumbent Richard Hervey has reportedly picked up the paperwork, but hasn’t filed anything yet.

Ward 5: As noted above, Mike Beilstein has filed the declaration and Gandara is pondering a council race.

Ward 6: John Detweiler, who lost to incumbent Joel Hirsch two years ago, has filed the declaration.

Ward 7: Richard Schroff, who lost to incumbent Jeanne Raymond two years ago, has filed the declaration.

Ward 8: Biff Traber has filed the declaration. Incumbent David Hamby has said he’s not seeking re-election.

Nothing official yet from Ward 4 and Ward 9, but I’d be surprised if the incumbents there — Dan Brown in Ward 4 and Hal Brauner in Ward 9 — don’t run again.