I have to confess to a John Kerry moment here: I was for City Council districts (having council members elected from specific parts of town) before I allowed Sam West, Paul Messinger, and others convince me it was a bad thing. I worked really hard to defeat district representation when we voted on it a few years ago.
However, I’ve seen a lot of bad things happen since then under our current at-large representation scheme. I’ve been on-the-record for years (since I briefly strayed) as an advocate for council districts. Whether or not my advocacy made any difference, I was alerted via Twitter this morning that Councilwoman Lisa Borowsky has agendized an item for Tuesday night’s city council meeting to, “Consider Establishing a District Form of Government.”
It should be very interesting to see who on the council supports and who opposes this item. I’m going to guess Mayor Lane will oppose based on his association with Paul Messinger. Ditto Dennis Robbins. There were some other Chamber folks on the pro side last time, so it is hard to guess how they’ll line up on this one.
2 Comments
John,
District representation, in my humble opinion, will give greater voice to each distinct area of our city. I can’t understand why anyone would oppose a more finite method of providing citizens with a voice…but by making that statement, I provide the answer.
Government today does not want its citizens in control. The entire voting process in most instances, is a sham. Whatever attempts to place governmental control back into the hands of citizens is something that I’m in favor of.
District representation would go a long way toward doing that and would loosen the grasp of special interest groups and parties from our throats and on our pocket books.
The US Congress has districts and has had them for years. There’s no reason Scottsdale shouldn’t have them as well.