District Elections Are Coming - Addressing Some Misconceptions

The Council voted to transition to district elections for 2018 using 5 districts and having the Mayor appointed by the Council. Following this, we'll allow the people to vote on how many districts they want and whether or not to elect the Mayor city-wide. We were prompted to do this by a threatened lawsuit, the details of which have been discussed previously (Click Here)

As we come closer to making decisions about the district elections I thought it would be good to cover some mis-conceptions about district elections.

Voting by District is Un-Natural

Voting by district is how most of our voting occurs. The Orange County Board of Supervisors is broken up into districts. Our U.S. Representatives and our State Assembly and Senate members are all broken up into districts.

Voting By District is Unwanted

Every time the issue of district voting has been brought to the voters they have approved it. In all those cases, after district voting was approved, no city voted to go back to city-wide elections. In a recent poll at Lake Forest Town Square, of those people who expressed an opinion, the vast majority were in favor of district elections.

Voting by District means fewer services

Almost all of our city services are performed city-wide. Few of them are district oriented. Examples of city-wide services include…

• Senior activities
• Sports Park activities
• Classes
• City events, workshops, seminars
• Police
• Fire
• Street maintenance

Voting by Districts means I get less attention.

No. It means now you know exactly who to go to for your local concerns. If that person isn’t responsive to your needs, you can kick them out at the next election. Meanwhile, you can still go to any other Council member and solicit their help. Right now I am working on –

• Landscape dis-repair at Vista Verde
• Landscape dis-repair at Borrego Trail
• Noise from Peppinos in FHR
• Busing for elementary students
• Inadequate student supplies at THHS
• Overgrowth at Serrano Creek
• Accident at ETHS
• Pesticides being used at schools
• Crime on Killy St
• Need for speed bumps

These issues come from every part of the City.

Voting by District Means Everyone for Themselves

Being elected from a district means you have two obligations – to the city, and to your district. The main obligation is to your city, and most of what Council members do is citywide. Even if it appears local, it still can be city-wide. For example, the Sports Field may be in someone’s district, but everyone in the City uses it. You may worry about accidents in your district near ETHS, but kids from all over the city go there, so it’s a city-wide issue. Look at the list of issues I’m working on right now. They are reproduced below along with their implications (local or citywide impact) –

• Landscape dis-repair at Vista Verde (local)
• Landscape dis-repair at Borrego Trail (city-wide)
• Noise from Peppinos in FHR (local)
• Busing for elementary students (city-wide)
• Inadequate student supplies at THHS (city-wide)
• Overgrowth at Serrano Creek (local)
• Accident at ETHS (city-wide)
• Pesticides being used at schools (city-wide)
• Crime on Killy St (local)
• Need for speed bumps (city-wide)

You can see that even when you are responding to individual resident’s needs, the issues they bring often have city-wide impacts even though the issue itself may be local.

Voting by District means discord among Council members

Anyone who’s been in Lake Forest knows that there is discord at the Council when city-wide elections happen. Councilwoman McCullough threatened a restraining order on Councilman Herzog. Councilman Robinson called on Councilman Nick to resign. Councilman Herzog was so disgusted with his colleagues he actually resigned. Etc. etc. It’s hard to imagine that district elections would cause anything like this level of discord.

Voting By District Leads to Balkanization

Some people are afraid that if selected by district, Council members will focus on their districts' interests over the interests of the city. In fact, that is a common criticism of the way the Council acted in the past based on city-wide elections. People from Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills have complained that the heavy representation of Lake 2 residents on Council and Committees meant that they (FHR and PH) were ignored. Electing people by district may in fact improve the situation.

Tomorrow let’s examine some benefits of district elections.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on Dec 2 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.