CHC 1979-06-19 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

legal counsel that that basis probably would be held valid as of now. Seeing that there were no other bases upon which we could consider any other form of districting, we, the subcommittee, then found itself restricted to using the State Representative Districts. Using that as a premise, we then have 5 representatives as far as the ..State_.Representative Districts are concerned . One from District 1 ; one from 3 and 4; two from District 2, which totals five. So the subcommittee started from there. If we are going to use districting as a basis then we are limited to that. I think I can relate to the commission , as a whole, that as far as the subcommittee is concerned, we do recommend districting. So, we are then, you know, limited to this basis. Now, the next problem facing the subcommittee was what number should the council consist of. Presently we have nine council members. There were actually two proposals presented to the subcommittee. One was two at-large and the other was four at-large. In other words, the alternatives were 7 council members and the other was 9 council members. The rationale for 5 district and 2 at-large was that--correct me, other members, if I don' t complete this whole thing correctly--we had much testimony as far as economizing and the efficiency of the county government. The rationale was that 7 could do the_ work just as well as the number nine. There was no real„ distinction or any advantage of having 9 over the seven. That the 2 at-large members could equally do the job as in the event of four. And as far as efficiency was concerned, it probablywas as efficient, if not more efficient by having just 7 members in the council. MRS. KOBAYASHI : There was one more thing, I think , which Akira brought up when I asked him. If you have 5 district and 4 at-large, the 4 at-large would offset the district representation theory. Because you will have almost as many from the district as you have at-large. And this was why the suggestion was to have =-seven. MR. ISHIDA: The emphasisas far as that was concerned was that we wanted to go districting as much as possible and the 4 would, in fact, might, defeat that purpose. It might be counter productive. Anything else on that point, Akira? MR. OMONAKA: Well , basically, that is if we went into a districting concept then if the only district that we can use is the house and if we go one from each house district then if you add more at-large you are just going to defeat the purpose. In other words, how can you really make it work in terms of district representation and yet get, big numbers like four to run at-large. It is hard to break, down the districts anymore.' -31-