Update on District Voting

I've been discussing district elections. (Click Here) Last Tuesday night the decision taken by the City Council in a 3-1-1 vote was to move forward with the district election process. The decision whether or not to elect a Mayor city-wide and how many districts we will have will be made after public comment. We could have -

• 5 districts, Mayor elected by Council
• 4 districts and Mayor elected city-wide
• 7 districts, Mayor elected by Council
• 6 districts and Mayor elected city-wide (my preference)

How exactly to draw the lines for the districts is up to demographers who will be given the task of identifying areas of similar size, geographic and demographic status. Prior to this the City will have at least 2 public meetings. Then the proposed map will be drawn up, publicized and then residents can give us their input in at least 2 more public meetings. After input from the public and a final review by the demographers and the lawyers, we can enact an ordinance before the end of the year and district elections can start in 2018.

FWIW - We are under threat of litigation unless we transition to district voting. No City that fought this has won. Some cities have spent as much as $7,000,000 trying to fight it and lost. Every city who put the decision on the ballot had the voters support the decision to move to districts. Personally I am in favor of district voting, even though it is likely I will be put in a district where I don't have the best chances to be re-elected. But it's not about me, it's about what's best for everyone and I believe district voting is best for everyone, though I also favor the Mayor being elected city-wide. I know there are different points of view, but this is what I believe.

The most surprising event Tuesday night was Andrew Hamilton's vote against moving to district elections. This would expose the City to millions of dollars of costs with very slight chances of success. Leah Basile and Dwight Robinson voted with me to move forward. Scott Voigts abstained. He wanted more time to think about it.

Col. Tom Cagley pointed out that if the City went to district elections, Hamilton and Robinson would undoubtedly be in the same district , and this may account for why Hamilton was opposed to the move. Robinson has been one of Hamilton's biggest monetary supporters, even though Council members giving money to each others' campaigns seems like a conflict of interest, and probably accounts for why Hamilton votes so often for whatever Robinson wants. Without Robinson's support, Hamilton might have to put his own money into the campaign. All of this may be academic with Hamilton's recall imminent.

Everyone on the Council said they favored putting it to a vote, however, waiting to transition would expose us to millions of dollars of liability. The best we could do is to leave the decision about electing the Mayor and how many districts we have to the public workshops. I asked our new City Manager if we could do some sort of survey to get wide public opinion so we could use this in our decision making, and she agreed.

At the next Council meeting we expect to have a schedule and more information will be available then.

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 Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on May 20 at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.