Editorial Opinion By Brad Rourke: Suggestions For Charter Review
Nov 25, 2009 8:00 - 6 Comments
In her inaugural talk at this weekend’s ceremony, Mayor >Phyllis Marcuccio outlined a number of planned initiatives, including three commissions: one to review budget and finance, one to improve communications, and one to review and make recommendations for the governance of the city.
I wanted to make a suggestion about city governance. People can take or leave it, dismiss it entirely, or perhaps build on it if they so choose.
Move to a Hybrid District and At-large Council Structure
I suggest that Rockville be divided into four (or some other number) representative districts, with roughly similar populations, and that each district would be represented by one member of the City Council. Candidates would run in each district separately. This would ensure that each area of Rockville would have someone on council focused on their interests and seeking to give them a voice. These would be two-year terms.
However, criticisms I have head that a district-only system might result in division do carry weight. And so, I suggest that, in addition to the district council representatives, two other candidates run at-large for four-year terms. These terms would be staggered, so that every two years citizens would vote for one district representative and one at-large representative. (If the number of districts is odd, then the number of at-large members would have to be odd too.)
This would result in a six-member Council with two at-large members and four district members. Including the Mayor, this would result in a seven-member governing body. With a seven member body, three could gather without triggering open meeting laws.
It would also ensure that each area of the City has someone speaking up on its behalf. I believe that Our Fair City is simply too big and diverse for one person to truly keep their eye on everything. This was driven home to me during the Twinbrook candidate forum in the last election. There was one question that asked the candidates to say how they would respond to specifically Twinbrook issues. A dismaying number of candidates appeared to be winging it on that question, hypothesizing what issues might face Twinbrook. Too few candidates seemed to just know the answer.
Various parts of town have, over time, gotten the feeling that they are shut out of conversations at City Hall, in part because candidates from other areas are over-represented. With district representation, we would no longer have to be content with having many candidates saying to each area, “I can represent you too.” Instead of a field with one candidate from Twinbrook, we might instead have three people competing for the chance to bring Twinbrook’s voice to City Hall — no matter what, each area will get a voice.
And, at the same time, with some at-large, longer term council members, we would also make sure we maintain some continuity and institutional memory from term to term, as well as have folks who are focused across the City and not in specific areas.
I am sure this is not a perfect plan. I have not tried to think it all the way through yet, as I am more interested in hearing discussion of its pros and cons — and perhaps some competing ideas.
So: What do you think?
(Please note: I don’t mean to pick on Twinbrook here, nor to pick on any individual candidates. I am just using it as an example.)
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Brad,There seems to be a couple of challenges in ensuring “east of the pike” representation in our current at-large system.I have entertained the notion to expand the current at large Council by two. Though I wonder if more slots means more candidates. The various fora are already barely functional attention deficit affairs of sound bite answers. This year, Carl Henn and Virginia Onley would have been the additional councilmembers, neither of whom reside east of the pike. In fact, the two candidates who reside east of the pike, Martin and Van Balgooy finished 8th and 10th out of 10. A challenge I see with district representatives is one of codified inequality. Some district will have more voters/residents than others, even upon the initial district designation. Over time, these populations will change and further skew “voter potency”. How will this dirft be addressed? Census-based district adjustment? Gerrymeandering? It seems like a logistical nightmare.Out of curiosity what four district do you envision? Here’s an overly simple scenario…Southeast = districts 3,4,5,6 (East of the Pike and south of Montrose)Western = district 7,8 (West of I-270)Northern = district 9,10 (North of College Parkway/Nelson Street)Central = district 1,2 (South of College Parkway/Nelson Street, North of Montrose)
Brad, I like your plan exactly for the reasons you wrote.
Brad:The real problem is that only 19% of voters voted in the last election. A candidate could win with less than 10% of the voters voting for them. In addition, these city run elections are horrifically expensive. What is needed is City elections held only every four years in conjunction with the national presidential elections where turn out is much greater. Holding city elections during the general election would allow for a maximum turn-out while greatly reducing the costs to the City of holding elections.Council could vote for this change at their next meeting. Thus allowing for more citizen involvement in the election process while saving money. We will see if any Council member will bring this topic up.Joe McClane
I think we had a ballot initiative on this two or four years ago and it was soundly defeated.Personally, I like having all four members accountable to me. And I like being able to reassess their performance every two years. Sure, 60,000 is a large population, but not THAT large.
Joe, the challenge I see with holding city elections during the general state and national election seasons is one of divided attention. Even though such larger jurisdiction elections mean less to our day to day lives, they none the less choke out any attention that might be given to municipal candidates. In my opinion, that is.
Hi everyone, thanks for the good comments. I appreciate them all!Just a couple of responses:On voter turnout, I do agree that it would be great if it were higher, but it is not abnormally low. Municipal elections are always low-turnout elections. In other words, it may be a symptomatic of a problem, but it is not symptomatic of a >Rockville problem. It is a societal issue. So, I doubt changes in our governing structure could do much to increase voter participation (although I would be interested to see the effects of connecting our cycle with the state and Federal cycles).
I do know that similar proposals have been rejected. I think they may not have been promoted most effectively. I do think that recent years in the City show that it is very, very difficult to represent the full City and still allow people from each area to feel as if they are well represented.
Finally, I did think about the number-of-candidates issue — we don’t want just one person running in each district. I tend to think we would have MORE people running in each district, as the job of winning would be more manageable. Imagine the thought process of a neighborhood leader. They might not think it worthwhile to run at-large, as they would not necessarily have a cross-city base. But they may well think to themselves, “Well, perhaps I could just run in my neighborhoods, where I am known.”
Thanks!