Single Member City Council Districts
The City of Austin Charter Revision Committee recently recommended City Council members be elected by single-member districts instead of at-large. This will be a bold change for Austin politics if Austin voters approve this change.
Currently, the Mayor and 6 City Council members are all elected at-large in Austin. There are currently no districts in Austin, each member represents the community at large. The reality of the situation is that the Central Austin environmentalist agenda controls the City Council as all of the members elected to the City Council are hand-selected to run. Due to low turnout in the May elections, the special interests of the pro-environmental, anti-business community in Austin elect the City Council.
If the State Legislature were elected through at-large districts, all 150 State Representatives would be attornies from Houston or Dallas as the largest number of votes and the most active voters are in those areas of Texas. The citizens of Texas would cry fowl if the State Legislature was did not represent their diverse interests. Citizens of Austin should do the same.
A proposal for single-member districts would allow for the diverse interests of Austin to elect their own representative to the City Council by district. Tarrytown will have one council member (instead of 6), Northwest Hills will have a member (instead of none), East Austin will have a member (instead of token representation), as will Southeast, Southwest, and Central Austin. The diverse interests of the community will be better debated by electing City Council members by district instead of collectively as a city.
The current composition of the Austin City Council is:
Mayor Will Wynn
Mayor Pro-Tem Betty Dunkerley
Mike Martinez
Jennifer Kim
Lee Leffingwell
Brewster McCracken
Sheryl Cole
Contact the Austin City Council if you support Single Member Districts to give the citizens of Austin better representation for our wide range of issues.
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2 comments:
Right on! Austin city government officials have long signaled their fealty to the High Church of Environmentalism. When the city Council is only an echo chamber of fashionable left-wing perspectives from central Austin, such initiatives might sound reasonable. Single member districts will help bring new voices to the debate and ensure that environmental concern is counterbalanced by economic reality. Read more here:
http://austinvitw.blogspot.com/2005/06/its-not-easy-being-green.html
I support single member districts.
The liberals talk about 'diversity', yet practice it through the patronizing 'gentleman's agreement' that is more about out-dated racial politics and not about really addressing the needs of all Austinite.
When I was in southwest Austin/Oakhill, they didnt have a voice, and didnt get needed servics (a library) for years after it was promised. Now in NW Austin, the same story. The needs of Austinits takes a back seat to the ideological agendas of the environmentalist clique.
We indeed have a left-liberal echo chamber at City Hall, and the central Austin clique runs the show, doing it so badly that less than 10% turnout usually happens in city council races.
It's time to shake things up and get real representation in Austin, because it cant get any worse here. Single-member districts are the way to go.
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