Quote Originally Posted by Tig3rzhark View Post
I would like someone to explain for me, the disadvantages of having council elected by district. If you look at the current council, many city council members live in more prominent areas of the city.
That's a fair question. Let's assume that the city will operate from Prop D.

Some advantages:

Filling a vacancy of one of the Council Members elected by 1. District would only cost around $425,000.00 as opposed to the $3,000,000.00 it cost for a special election to fill an at large seat.

2. Areas that haven't had a Council Member residing there for decades will have the opportunity to have one.

3. Council Members will be empowered to address constituent concerns in their districts.

Some disadvantages.

1. No matter how much you may want to vote for a candidate, you may not be able to if that candidate is not running in your district. Unless that candidate is running for one of the at large seats.

2. Expect a big increase in City Council's budget as they may have to lease and staff district offices along with their CAYMC offices.

3. The potential for nepotism. If done like the County, outgoing Members choose their replacements. Ken Cockrel and Kwame Kenyatta both chose their wives to replace them. [[Yeah I know, they're both real stand up guys).

Those are just a few things off the top of my head. Hopefully, there will be enough public input with the Charter Commission to address a lot of road blocks that will come up. I'm also hoping that personal agendas of the Charter Commisioners don't interfere with the work that's being done on the Charter. One of the reasons districts didn't pass the first time was because the Charter Commission tried to expand, if you can believe it, City Council to 11 members. As you can guess, there were about 11 or 12 Charter Commissioners that were attempting to use their Charter Commission positions as a stepping stone to run for City Council. Which, and understandably so, probably had something to do with Detroiters for Council by Districts deciding to push for Prop D even though the Charter's going to be revised.

Other things, such as whether a district council member will be able to fill the vacancy of an at large member, will hopefully get worked out over the course of the revision.

But, what's going to matter the most, is that we choose capable leaders, as Bailey has pointed out, regardless of what kind of system we're in. Prop D has a lot of similarities with how we select our school board members. So here's a question. Are you satisfied with the Detroit School Board?