CLEVELAND, Ohio – Petition campaigns to shrink Cleveland City Council from 17 members to nine and to cut council pay by more than 25 percent is experiencing no problems getting signatures, an organizer said this week.
The activist group Clevelanders First has collected a total of 8,500 signatures between the two issues, or about one third of the 24,000 signatures the group probably will need, said organizer John Kandah.
“I’ve never worked on a campaign where I’ve heard more support for an issue,” Kandah said in an interview with cleveland.com.
What will it take to get to the ballot?
The city charter requires that petitioners collect signatures equal to 10 percent of the Cleveland votes in the last city election – about 62,700 in 2017.
That means for each of the two issues, reducing the size and cutting the pay, the circulators will have to collect about 6,270 signatures of Cleveland residents who are registered to vote.
Historically, about half the signatures collected are rejected as invalid for any of a variety of reasons, including listing an address that doesn’t match the signer’s voter registration address.
That factor could come into play here. It could be months before Clevelanders First files its petitions with the city – plenty of time for some signers to move and change their voter registration addresses.
When did the campaign begin?
Clevelanders First launched the petition drive last November, when circulators approached people as they went to vote on Election Day. The effort is relying on volunteers to circulate the petitions, Kandah said.
They hope to get their issues on the November 2020 ballot.
What would the two charter changes do?
The activists, who claim the support of politically active businessman Tony George, propose eliminating eight of the 17 ward seats on City Council.
The second issue would cut council pay by more than 25 percent, from $80,133 to $58,000.
What are residents saying?
The complaints about city government have been consistent among the signers, Kandah said:
- City Council is just a rubber stamp for Mayor Frank Jackson and is not performing its check-and-balance watchdog responsibilities.
- Council members are out of touch with constituents and unresponsive.
- Cleveland’s council is simply too large compared to other cities.
A survey of some of America’s largest by cleveland.com found that Cleveland’s 17-member council is both larger and better paid than most. But those other cities generally had much larger staffs.
Among the 15 most populous cities in the United States, only three had more council members. In five of those cities, the annual pay was greater than the pay for Cleveland council members.
Cleveland, with a population of about 385,525, according to the 2017 U.S. Census estimates, ranked 51st in size.
Among five cities with populations similar to Cleveland’s, New Orleans paid its members about $68,000 a year. It ranked 49th in the 2017 estimates with 393,292 residents. The other four similarly sized cities paid council members $43,756 a year or less.
None of those five cities had more than eight members on their city councils.
What has City Council’s reaction been?
Needless to say, the members of council oppose the idea. They held a rare closed-door meeting last year to discuss strategy shortly after the petition drive became public.
Council President Kevin Kelley has said that cutting membership and pay would mean council would not be able to attract well-qualified candidates.
He also argues that reducing the size of council would mean less representation as council members would have to represent much larger wards.
The population in the current 17 wards averages about 22,600 people. If that population were spread through nine wards, the average would rise to nearly 43,000 per ward.
Only five other communities in Cuyahoga County have more than 43,000 residents.
Kelley also has accused proponents of being driven by spite, noting that George, a businessman and restaurateur from Westlake, was part of a business group that failed to win an energy contract in 2018 that the city ultimately awarded to Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council.
Read Again https://www.cleveland.com/cityhall/2019/05/proposals-to-slash-cleveland-city-council-pay-number-of-members-quickly-drawing-support-organizers-say.htmlBagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Proposals to slash Cleveland City Council pay, number of members quickly drawing support, organizers say - cleveland.com"
Post a Comment