District Elections Are Coming - Some Possible Benefits

Yesterday we cleared up some misconceptions about district elections. Today I want to focus on some of the possible benefits.

District Elections are Less Expensive

Since it was first incorporated, the general rule in elections in Lake Forest is whomever spends the most comes in first, who spends the second most comes in 2nd, etc. Some candidates spend $50,000 or more to get elected. The average person can't spend that much.

One of the reasons it’s so expensive is that you have to campaign across 15 square miles and in 25,000 households. A decent mailer can cost as much as $1 apiece (design, print, mail), so a single mailing to everyone in the City could cost $25,000. Most campaigns send out at least 2 mailers, so you do the math.

District elections will cut the costs by 1/5 because you now have to reach 5,000 households instead of 25,000 households. Also, districting will significantly decrease the area, and for some high density districts, the area will be less than 1 square mile.

Less Expensive Means Less Need for Special Interests

Because the cost of elections should come down immeasurably, it will not be necessary for candidates to compromise their values and take money from special interests.

Unfortunately it has been a long common practice for most Council members to accept money from special interests and use this money to finance their campaigns. Then when the special interests come to the Council asking for a contract, or for a re-zoning, or some other consideration, the Council member who took the money inevitably votes "yes". I've traced over 150 votes by Council members going back 10 years that could be tied to money and in 149 out of 150 cases the adage "Follow the Money" applied.

City Council members' votes should not be up for sale. When a city council member votes his/her only concern should be the well-being of the city, and not whether or not he/she will get another $5000 or $33,500 from a campaign contributor.

District Elections are Less Rancorous

In city-wide elections, often candidates who oppose each other and say/write terrible things about each other may find themselves sitting on the same council. Now they have to make-up, but that’s not necessarily easy, especially in a hard fought campaign. District elections will be such that opposing candidates never sit on the same council.

District Elections Provide More Accountability

Let’s face it – there are some Council members who do next to nothing. They don’t show up at city events and they don’t handle problems for residents. So others pick up the slack, but this allows the slacker to keep doing nothing. By making Council members responsible for a local (district) issue, we should get more work from some of our Council members. If we don't, the people know where the ball has been dropped and they can respond appropriately at the next election.

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.