Council Districts Should Be Scrapped

The most significant proposal to fall in the Legislative Council’s initial review of the Charter Revision Commission’s recommended charter changes was a plan to have three of the council’s members elected at-large rather than by district as is done now. The change would have allowed every Newtown voter to have a hand in electing three members from his or her district, plus another three at-large, amounting to half the council’s total membership. Of the charter changes recommended by the commission, this was the weakest – it was by design a half-way measure.

The council’s entire membership should be elected at-large. We can’t remember ever seeing the council members from a particular district raising or supporting an issue because it was of benefit only to their section of town. We doubt that one in ten voters could name the council representatives of their district, though most active voters could name several of the council members in general. And council members themselves report that they get calls from concerned residents on various issues from all over town. Do we seriously think that even having all the council members live on one street would result in a cabal running the town?

So why even elect council members by district? Right now, the districts aren’t even the same size. The town has 14,488 registered voters and 12 council members. Each council member should represent about 1,200 voters. With districts configured as they are now across the town’s voting population, Will Rodgers, in District III, represents 1,375 voters; Don Studley, in District I, represents 1,160 voters; and Tim Holian, in District II, represents 1,090 voters. If you do the math, you will find that the voters in the least populous District II (4,359 voters) have 26 percent more voting power per capita than the voters in the most populous District III (5,496 voters). In practice, however, council members try to represent all of Newtown as best they can. The imbalance, which violates the constitutional principle of one-person, one-vote, would be of concern if the districts had any practical political value at all – but they don’t. What is worthy of our concern is the continuation of a system that limits any given voter to voting for only one-third of a council that sets the mill rate of 100 percent of their local property taxes.

We hoped the Charter Revision Commission would eliminate this unnecessary and unfair method of voting for council candidates once and for all. Because that didn’t happen, the problem promises to get worse. Once state assembly and senate districts are realigned in accordance with the latest census data, the disparities in the local council districts may not be easily reconciled with the new boundaries of the state voting districts. This could create a system in which some people would be in District III for state elections and, say, District II for local elections. The confusion isn’t worth it for a system of voting that doesn’t appear to have any purpose in the first place.