1999-06-16 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 8 of 11 really no money there unless we wanted to rob Peter to pay Paul, cut off public workers or spend money for some other reason, really it would be best to avoid these special elections because cost wise, I don’t know what your past costs were but they were anywhere from $500,000 to $1,000,000, even more. Elections are very expensive so please consider that. Also I’ve heard some discussion about whether you would want to abolish the Office of Mayor. I know some Councilmen themselves have discussed this issue. I think that this is a little bit premature, trying to change this office entirely. If you’re only going to look at that aspect of changing the government, maybe you should look at more things than simply eliminating the Mayor. Maybe you should look at things like, and I’m not really ready to educate you on proportional representation, but things like proportional representation where each vote, like in the European elections or New Zealand even. There are sizable voting blocs in each of these countries that are able to assume some sense of power based on the number of votes those areas get - either partisan or groups, whether it be a party or not but it’s based on the number of votes each ideology gets and I think that’s going to be more sound than simply having an appointed Managing Director which we already have at least one Managing Director that could be appointed so I think that you should be really slow to start fooling around with our form of representation. I think that for the people that put it together in the first place, this is actually a really good Charter. I think you should think hard before you change it much at all. It’s a good document. Secondly, I’ve heard some discussion of changing from partisan to nonpartisan elections. I view this as a really major threat, speaking as a Green Party member myself, I’m just going to be flat out about it. I think it will definitely hurt the Green Party because here we are, it’s a fledgling party. We’ve just now in the last few years, tried to get off the ground. The other parties have been around for a long, long time and to try to change all the rules just when one party is getting some power, I think it would not be really a healthy situation for this county. It would also raise the costs of running for Council because if the Council is going to be appointing this position of Managing Director, instead of being anywhere from $10,000 to $60,000 which some people spend on running for office right now, it would probably be more in the range, to run a successful campaign it would be anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000 because so much power would be concentrated on the Council and so there you would be facing some other major changes. Seems just changing the Mayor is a small thing to a Managing Director but it would have far reaching effects across the whole government of this county. I actually view it as there would still be two parties; those that are well funded corporate-wise and the resident’s party who has very few resources. Thank you so much. I’ll hopefully turn in a little bit better outlines with what proportional representation is and those of you who wish, could contact me. RAY: Just once again to point out, all we do is suggest amendments that would go before the public. We wouldn’t change anything. This body doesn’t have that power, okay? The public does. You do, as a voter. BOB JACOBSON: I realize that. But certainly the weight of this many people making suggestions and then having elections and actually putting your recommendations directly into printed form before the voters, carries considerable weight and you have to admit that. RAY: Okay, questions? Mr. Santangelo. SANTANGELO: I was interested in the comment on nonpartisan because I know while I was on the Council, that came up several times and you talk, say I’m a republican, you talk with a republican, oh, dear Lord, you can’t do file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011