Council by District

About an hour ago, former State Rep., Steve Tobacman and the League of Women Voters submitted 38,000 petition signatures [[26,000 required), asking that the Council by District plan be placed on the November ballot.

Their plan calls for 7 districts and 2 At-Large representatives. The Council President would be the highest vote getter of those elected At-Large, President Pro-Tem would be the runner up.

The 7 districts are being defined by the current 7 school district lines.


http://councilbydistricts.org/news/

If I was to vote on this, I would have to vote no. I like the setup. 7 districts and 2 at large but the method that would used to choose the president of council is a deal breaker for me. No way should the 2 at-large would be president/ppt.

I respect that the people responsible for this want change but that is why we are electing a charter commission that is going to change the charter. One of those issues up for discussion: the way the council is elected.

The Charter Commission has a three year time limit staring November of '09. At the end of the period, or before if voted by 3/4 of the Commission, the Commission can provide a New Charter for voter review or they can decide to not provide a New Charter. There is an outside chance that the voters will review their New Charter in the Spring election of 2014.

Just because a Charter Commission will be seated doesn't mean they will cooperate with each other, it doesn't mean you'll like the New Charter any better than the current one, nor does it mean that District voting will be part of the New Charter.

Not too sure I follow why you don't like the two highest vote getters being President/Pro Temp. That is how it currently works.

I personally like council by district. However, I think many cities eliminated it years ago to, among other things, get rid of the patronage in each district that goes with it - in other words, to root out corruption.

Now we want to get rid of at-large elections to root out corruption. How about we just get rid of the corrupt council members?

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Originally Posted by gnome

Not too sure I follow why you don't like the two highest vote getters being President/Pro Temp. That is how it currently works.

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I do not like it because we probably going to see Charles Pugh elected council president under the current rules which state that the top vote-getter is council president and the no.2 vote-getter is president pro tempore. This arrangement failed Detroit because the last president pro tempore was Monica Conyers who let the title go to her head and when she was elevated to council president she turned council it into her own private circus. What do you expect from a novice?

The council president should be elected by his or her peers. I would like the setup to be the two senior members of council to be president/ppt. One of the reasons why Conyers failed besides her attitude was that she was given too much responsibility as president pro tempore of council in her first term. Imagine the disaster awaiting Charles Pugh if he elected president. Who is going to respect a stone cold rookie running the council? Did I forget to mention the "ghey?"

Interesting plan, until you throw in seniority ... you get BRC as pro temp.

GPC, fyi, Detroit is the ONLY city in the USA with a population over 500,000 that doesn't have districts.

From another thread:

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On the subject of Council by District, it seems that several folks are a tad misinformed. True, there was graft, corruption and the wholesale selling of votes and favors. In fact, in 1914, one of the first uses of a wire recorder was used to capture several aldermen selling their votes right inside the old City Hall's Council Chambers.

The playback was inaudible and the prosecutions case fell apart. No one was convicted.

However, the drama of that corruption case, pales in comparison to the real reason behind the move to At-Large representation.

Around the turn of last century, there was a massive influx of Poles, Hungarians and worst of all: Germans. Germans had the particular bad habit of being pretty organized. They organized in beer gardens within their enclaves on the eastside. They spoke their own language, had their own newspaper [[Deutcher Abend Post which is still the USA's largest German language paper now called the Abend Post I believe) and were thriving in commerce and political power.

WWI comes along and German's aren't the most popular with their secret beirgardens and closeknit enclaves. Toss in Carrie Nation and her anti-drinking shrews, sprinkle in Women's Suffrage and you get a huge wave of discontent within the Nativist community.

The Germans, again in their cleverness, formed voting blocks within their Eastern European brethren. Pollocks, Krauts and Honkies all sharing the City's spoils of jobs and resources. The Nativists, fearing their power waning, devised the At-Large system to not just clean-up corruption, but to break the powerblocks of the Aryans.

So, before we get all freaky about corruption, keep in mind we are the only city in America with a population more than a half million that doesn't have a District system, and remember that the main push to ban district representation was rooted in the distrust for a people we were at war with.

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Originally Posted by gnome

Interesting plan, until you throw in seniority ... you get BRC as pro temp.

GPC, fyi, Detroit is the ONLY city in the USA with a population over 500,000 that doesn't have districts.

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You forget, she was gone for 10 years. No, the two would have Sheila Cockrel and Alberta Tinsley-Talabi in 2005.

You're right, I factored her previous service, but according to most of our labor contracts, you pick up where you left off on the senority ladder.

The problems with MonCon had nothing to do with the system and everything to do MonCon. The best way to keep kooks out of important positions is to not elect them in the first place.

On the plus side, MonCon certainly provided two tons of conversation around the City. Gotta give her credit for that; and moreover, if not for those antics, 38,000 people might not have signed the District Proposal petition.

Terrible ideal, its like bringing back the evil ward system with a strong central government authority to oversee community development from it point of view.


VOTE HELL NO!

Detroit does not need a council by districts.

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Originally Posted by gnome

GPC, fyi, Detroit is the ONLY city in the USA with a population over 500,000 that doesn't have districts.

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Avoiding the political ills of other big cities was one of the specific reasons for progressive reforms in Detroit in the first place. Those ills very much included the sort of ethnic block voting you cite, and the greasing of powerful palms within those communities by so-called "ward healers" to assure their votes come election day. Detroit, with its non-partisan elections, common council representing the entire city's interests instead of the particularistic interests of smaller communities, and a lack of ward healers and the like [[along with other things, like publicly-owned transit), was a pioneer in the urban reform movement of the early 20th century.

In any event, I've lived in a few of those other cities you mention. And Detroiters ought to think long and hard before they turn back the clock in reaction to their own voting decisions, with some unrealistic view that a district system is some sort of panacea. The district system doesn't work any better, is even more prone to corruption than an at-large system, and has a whole host of other problems. What works is voting in decent people in the first place, and having a system that allows council and mayor to work together to reach goals. What works even better, of course, is having an economy, a tax base, and a stable population.

I'd vote for this, but I also agree that giving the two at-large positions president and ppt just seems like something tacked on without thinking. In most cities, the council chooses the president from amongst themselves. This makes it more likely that the body will work collegially instead of adversarialy.

BTW, look at what the abolition of the wards eventually led to. Just because it was progressive at the time doesn't make it progressive now. In this case, council at-large is obviously now nonprogressive taking members from being bought on a neighborhood scale to the point of where they can be bought on a city-wide scale thus taking the member even more unaccountable and distant than before. You don't have the same problems that you had back then; you have different ones. Detroit needs districts almost as much as the state and national governments do to elect their members.

EastsideAl,

With districts, it will be easier to vote in decent people. It’s a math thing - the more open positions, the more random the election results. When Conyers was elected with the second highest number of votes, it wasn’t because voters thought she was the second best person for the position. She was elected because enough people thought she was the ninth best person for the position. That’s not saying a lot.

Neither Conyers nor Reeves would have been elected if we had had districts. If either had run for one of two at-large seats, no one would have even taken their campaigns seriously. It would have been painfully obvious that they did not have the experience for the position. Two qualified incumbents, or perhaps an incumbent and an experienced challenger would have been elected to the at-large seats. If they had run for open district positions, other opponents in their districts would have danced circles around their campaigns.

MIRepublic,

It makes sense for the two at-large council members be the president and ppt. They will be the two council members elected by the whole city, and represent the whole city. They will be the council members that voters think are the two most qualified for the position. Not the council members that the voters think are the eighth and ninth best for the position.

When I voted Tuesday, I practiced my own form of district voting. I voted two at large, those being Cockrel & Kenyetta. I voted for Sheila Jackson, an eastsider whose work & work ethic I know. For Charter Commission, I voted for three eastsiders & one from Southwest Detroit.

Of my choices of "unknowns" only one made the final cut. Elena Herrada. Elena, originally an eastsider is well known in southwest detroit for her outstanding non profit work. Please support Elena with your vote in November!

Voting by district can't come fast enough for me. I do agree that that top vote getter is a bad idea. I didn't vote Pugh for that reason. I wasn't the least surprised to see that Pugh was the top vote getter in the primary. He most likely will come in first in November. It is ludicrous to think a rookie could be president. I think he would make a fine council person but president, no way.

I am tired of the eastside always getting sold short. I want to see champions for all our neighborhoods in place.