2000-03-25 Charter Commission Minutes

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minutes 03-25-00Page 23 of 34 member, short terms, immediate re-election, realities of a constituency building, coalition building have blocked these kind of effective things, and have continued to hurt this side of the island on some of those issues. I’m sure someone can point out a case to the contrary, but that’s one. What I think is critical is to have a Council - We should come up with measures that result in a Council, as more people seek, and are presumably qualified for re-election, and perform enough to satisfy their constituencies, whatever the district make- up is, so that they will serve enough time, hopefully at least four years. I chose to leave after four years, feeling that I finally had a fairly good idea of what the parameters were, and what I could and couldn’t do, and how to deal with it. But I chose not to run for my own reasons, and that’s fine, but many other people did. It’s a tough process; getting elected and re-elected. And just about everyone else also chose that. That led to a case where there were six new members all in one year, and that was tough for the County. Since that time, there’s been no legislative action since 1996 on several major issues before the County, such as sign ordinance, subdivision ordinance. The Council I served on would not have passed the 1996 Zoning Ordinance which resulted in other legal controversy later, but ended up being ratified. Would not have passed, I guess, if four out of nine of us had chosen not to run for re-election and therefore, we weren’t distracted by seeking re-election, campaigning district-wide. We focused on dealing with the technicalities and issues and were able to do that. But it definitely would not have passed, and I’m not sure where we would be today, given that no other major bills other than finally a sewer rate increase, to their credit, was finally dealt with as a step toward Federal compliance. So I think we need to have better retention within the term limits. We need greater direct responsibility to all communities of the island, not just the boundaries of the current single member districts. We need to create a basis, challenge the Mayor’s interpretations of what he needs to do and why he’s doing it, and actions items, when Council members feel appropriate. This is why I think there’s value in an at- large, or anything out bigger than the current district system. If someone is elected at-large, they have a franchise, to use the term generally, to be able to stand up and say I don’t agree with the Mayor’s position. I have been to these communities. I speak with these people, and it’s my duty to say that there is another side of this. It’s a little hard for a single member district person to assume that position as a spokesperson, or two or three of them. We badly need, in my view, another advocate for a multi-district, presumably island-wide approach, to dealing with our difficulties. Lastly, in that regard, we need to create a pool of qualified, well experienced County leaders who will seek and compete for the Mayor’s seat. People who have had an island-wide responsibility, to allow them to groom themselves, if they are so interested, to compete and vie as having not only district perspective, but an island-wide perspective so we have people knowledgeable and not simply coming from other legislative bodies like the State where they represented a district before, and presume to go straight to a Mayor’s seat. There’s no perfect way, and all our candidates are going to come from somewhere, but I think it behooves all voters to have an island-wide base. On the terms of these members, I feel that the extension of incumbent eligibility that’s been suggested for 2002, looking ahead to that, and Mr. Ray made some explanatory comments there - I think any extension of incumbent eligibility should be limited to only at-large seats, which is a new island-wide position, and that any person, even though the district boundaries might be enlarged from one-ninth to one-sixth, that there should be no hangover of eligibility for that. Frankly, I’m comfortable on the six district concept that the Legislature - Knowing where those lines actually fall and how stable they have been over the decade. I’m comfortable that they reasonably represent at the House level, reasonably represent constituency, so I don’t have a problem with the suggested language to rely on that. I do have a problem with the thought, though, that if the State does change that to be more or less, that we would then have a Commission. Here’s the problem. Where you say that the boundaries would have to follow as closely as possibly the State lines, well, we’ve got six now. Logically the State, if they were to move to five or to seven or to eight, what is ‘as closely as possible’? If you change or increase one district, that’s a roughly 20% shift. Mathematically you could argue it’s 20 or 25 or whatever, but roughly a 20% shift in district. Well, ‘as closely as possible’ means you move everything off 10% all the way around, or does it mean to hug one boundary and have the other side be 40% off? How do you want to set up a Court situation for challenge by a disgruntled constituency? Do you want to go back to a judge and have a judge decide whether ‘as closely as possible’ meant half of everything, or keep this boundary and go over to there? I’m not sure that you should use that language. Just simply, I would suggest focus on something that reasonably, in the view of the Commission, represents the community make-up on that district size if you’re going to go to a different number. Anyway, please think about that because I think you’re setting yourself up for lawsuits and trouble, or that we’re setting a County up for more fighting, from the way it’s just saying ‘as closely as possible’. Non-partisan. Island-wide elections are difficult for a Council seat. I ran one, myself, unsuccessfully in 1990. I can understand the points made about partisan bases for at least an at-large or island-wide race, because as a person who ran at that time, virtually unknown, nearly so outside of this region, it was, of course, difficult and having a party network to help support me island-wide made a huge difference. There were two seats open and I came in third out of two winners that would be chosen, and I got pretty good perspective from that. I think an island-wide election would make sense, to remain partisan. District level, I don’t think it matters. The partisan issue, I believe though, should be a ballot issue. I think the voters should file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 03-25-00.html7/1/2011