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Monday, July 5, 2010
Charter Agenda Items -- Reducing Mayor and Council Salaries and Moving Elections to November
I am proposing two charter amendments that will address problems that have been raised recently:
Proposal to reduce the number of City Council meetings to only two times a month.
Reduced voter turn-out for city council elections.
Three council members want to reduce the number of council meetings to just two a month. When the council and mayor's salaries were set in 1988, they were set based upon 4 council meetings a month. Sometime around 2004, the Council reduced the meetings to 3 and now they want to reduce it to two. So, I am proposing that the voters get to vote on reducing the salaries of the mayor and city council commensurate to the 50 percent reduction in public meetings. (Please. I don't buy it that two meetings a month will allow council members to have more community meetings. I have community meetings frequently on other days/nights than Tuesday. Two meetings a month will mean more decisions get made behind the scenes and public involvement will be squashed because after all "we have a very full agenda with only meeting two times a month...so hurry along." The people of our city are struggling financially and what is being proposed is an insult to every resident who would gladly change places with 9 city council members and work full time.)
Voter turnout in April primaries in Long Beach is dismal. The elections are costly because the city conducts them. Study after study shows that timing of an election is everything for turnout and it reduces costs to cities, which is why 40% of cities have moved their elections to be concurrent with statewide elections.
I am proposing to move our elections to a November winner-take all. This would increase voter turnout because voters already vote in state and federal elections. It would also reduce costs for the City which can consolidate the election with the county. And, it would reduce campaign spending. A candidate would only have to raise and spend for one election.
We need to remember that Long Beach once elected council members by having candidates run from an area in a primary and then the top two had to be run for city wide vote. We don't do that any longer.
