City Charter Review: Sweeney proposes population “indexing” for Council size
At the Charter Review Commission meeting this morning, City Council President Martin Sweeney proposed to tie the size of City Council to an “index” of 25,000 residents per ward.
Sweeney wants the new system, which would probably result in an immediate reduction from 21 to 17 Council members, to take effect for the 2009 municipal election. That would require action by Council in August to put it on the ballot for approval by City voters in November.
He stressed that he was speaking only for himself and not for any other Council member. But three out of the four Council members on the Commission — Johnson, Coats and Kelly — expressed support for his idea. (The fourth, Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland, was chairing the meeting and did not express an opinion.)
Under Sweeney’s proposal, an initial redistricting would take place in 2009 based on current U.S. Census population estimates. The resulting wards would be corrected in 2011 using regular decennial Census data, and then redone every ten years based the new Census. The number of wards would be the odd number closest to the result of dividing the city’s total population by 25,000.
For example: If next year’s Census estimate says Cleveland has 421,000 residents, Sweeney’s plan would set the number of Council wards at 17 (the closest odd number to 421,000 divided by 25,000 = 16.84).
Sweeney’s presentation was the nearest thing to an official kickoff of the Commission’s discussion of Council size, which is widely assumed to be the hottest topic of this Charter Review. Key hotness indicator: Unlike previous Commission meetings, today’s audience featured at least four reporters as well as a Plain Dealer editorial board member. There were also strong public comments for and against Council reduction at last night’s community meeting.
I’m expecting to hear a lot more about this in the next week or two.
June 19th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I listened to your Ideastream conversation about Charter Review issues when you hinted that this was going to be presented today. (Good interview, thoughtful). And I personally think it makes a lot of sense. It’s not the only solution. We still need more citizen activity in wards where there are no block clubs. I’m going to work on my area.
Also regarding the caller who complained about council people missing meetings. Personally I wasn’t that dismayed with the percentages. They seemed okay to me, with the exception of one or two on the Council. I think the real question is, when the council members are present are they active or passive; are the council people actively pursuing input from residents or are they passive - are they doing the work of the wards? Maybe it’s just me, but that seems more important than whether they miss 4% of the meetings.
June 21st, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Marty should think of a city with 650,000 residents and increase the council representation to 25. If each ward functioned as a small town or suburb, and each councilperson were a mini-mayor and had equal standing with, say, the mayor of Bay Village, then we’d be fairly aligned as we proceed down the path to regionalism. To take the council representation back give us less say when things are regional, and they will try to feed off us, as they have during the foreclosure frenzy–Clunky staffs in Hudson make a living so long as they abridge the rights of residents of Cleveland.
We should be talking about serving workable clusters of people, graded by population and income and size, not saying one city is the same as another city, or one mayor has the same standing as any other mayor. Each of our councilpeople is the equivalent of a mayor or city manager from the suburbs. Let’s not forget that as we look over the attendance records. Let them run the wards the same way as small cities are run, and we will have grounds for legitimate comparisons, and we will all be better off than we are now.