Updated: 7:03 p.m.

The Portland Marathon board of directors has canceled the 2018 race and plans to dissolve the 47-year-old Portland Marathon organization, according to an open letter the board sent Friday to The Oregonian/OregonLive.

"There will be no Portland Marathon in 2018," began the letter, attributed to board members Richard Busby, Julian Smith, Andy Ritchie, Jim Schaeffer and Gina McVicker.

The same letter was sent to the City of Portland at 11:30 a.m. Friday.

The move comes more than a week after former Portland Marathon event director Les Smith reached a settlement with the Oregon Department of Justice. Smith was found to have illegally borrowed money from the Portland Marathon and was required to repay $865,000, of which $50,000 would go to the Oregon Department of Justice to cover the cost of the investigation.

Mamie Wheeler, Smith's business partner in the Portland Marathon and for-profit company Next Events, remains under investigation. Smith admitted no wrongdoing in the agreement.

In January, Portland city officials had decided to allow the Portland Marathon to proceed with the 2018 event, despite an open investigation into conflicts of interest related to their for-profit and nonprofit businesses as well as the corporate structure of their nonprofit.

The city's decision came against the recommendation of city employees who had struggled to work with Smith and Mamie Wheeler for several years. At the time, plans were already underway to ask for proposals for a replacement marathon in 2018. Mayor Ted Wheeler (no relation to Mamie Wheeler) opted to delay that process and look for a replacement for 2019.

In Friday's letter to The Oregonian/OregonLive, members of the new Portland Marathon board, assured the 2,500 people already signed up for the run that they would get a full refund, through the race registration platform, Active.com.

"Our decision was based on a number of factors, including a decline in race registrants for 2018 and the Board's understanding of the City of Portland's desire to move in a different direction," wrote the board.

Last week, however, the city was in negotiations with the Portland Marathon board, which was formed in July of 2017 but was not publicly announced until after the settlement with Smith, to keep the 2018 race alive.

In an April 19 email conversation between Portland Marathon board lawyer Michael Neff and Ted Wheeler spokesperson Michael Cox, Cox wrote, "As we indicated in our meeting, we believe 2018 provides an opportunity: the chance to demonstrate that Portland Marathon has moved beyond recent controversy; a chance to show that Portland Marathon and the City of Portland can work productively together, a chance to prove that the Portland Marathon is indeed a world-class event."

The City of Portland had planned to open up the request for proposals, officially referred to as the RFI or request for information, on Friday, April 20. The Portland Marathon board felt that opening up that request, would be "a clear vote of no-confidence to the Board."

"So, even if the Mayor Wheeler and his city administration are not ready to mothball the RFI concept," Neff responded to Cox, "a reasonable delay would be helpful toward allowing the Board to hire the type of talent needed for the race director position and to have the necessary initial conversations with Portland's running community to identify prospective new Board members."

Cox responded that the city would delay the request for information until Friday, April 27.

In a phone interview Friday, Cox confirmed that the request was scheduled to go out sometime during the day. It was posted to the City of Portland's website at around 4:30 p.m.

Cox said that the city had hoped to work with the Portland Marathon in 2018 but that they had made also made it clear "that we are planning for an open competitive process" for 2019 and beyond.

Now, the city will focus most of their energy on that effort, Cox said. Still, "It's also up to us to see if we can find a solution for 2018," he added.

He said the city will now begin to look into the feasibility of 2018 marathon without the Portland Marathon organization.

"That's a heavy lift," he added, "and it's still undetermined what our options are."

In Friday's open letter, the Portland Marathon board wrote, "Our decision was based on a number of factors, including a decline in race registrants for 2018 and the Board's understanding of the City of Portland's desire to move in a different direction."

"Upon taking oversight responsibility, we made diligent efforts to move the Portland Marathon organization in a positive direction and resolve past challenges, the state of the organization has proved too fragile," the letter continued. "We concluded that the only responsible choice is to dissolve the organization and distribute the remaining funds to charitable organizations."

In an email Friday, Neff said the board will decide where exactly to distribute the remaining funds, including what is left from the money paid by Smith, after consulting with the Oregon Department of Justice.

You can read the entire letter here:

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052

lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker