Strategic Plan 2012-13 Update #2

Development took place for items 4 and 8 and were reported to the Assembly April 24. The Summer Communication workshop (Item 4) subcommittee met 4/16 and modified the proposed day-long seminar.  The subcommittee (Buxton, Hoffman, Lapp, Scott) recommends a 2-evening session seminar open to the public and focused on skills an Assembly member needs in order to listen and communicate effectively with the public and with each other.  Further communication with the proposed contractor (Daniel Henry) is needed before a formal recommendation will be made to the Assembly.

Investigation into the possibility of conducting election of Assembly members from a list of candidates (Item 8) so that all candidates run against each other has been started with emails between the Mayor and local government specialist Glen Hamburg from the Department of Community and Regional Affairs.  The Assembly is considering retiring the current practice of having candidates run for "seats."  Mr. Hamburg writes:

The downside to having candidates register as a candidate and run for a specific "seat" may be that they end up losing the election while actually having received more votes than someone else who gets elected to the governing body.  For example, say Jane Doe registers as a candidate specifically for assembly seat "A" and has to run against Bob Smith for that specific seat.  At the same time, maybe Sally Sue is the only person who registers as a candidate for seat "B."  At the election, Jane receives 101 votes, Bob receives 145 votes, and Sally receives 60 votes.  If the election rules are such that the candidate who receives the most votes for a specific seat wins that seat, Bob would win seat A and Sally would win seat B, even though Sally received less votes than Jane.  This system often then leads to candidates strategizing over which seat they'll run for given who their challengers might be.

Typically though, first class cities that label their council seats A, B, C, D, E, and F are having candidates all competing against each other.  Their elections rules and ballots explain that the two candidates with the most votes overall will end up in the vacant seats.  The lettering then just acts a convenient way to keep track of when the term for that seat expires.  This is especially helpful when one seat is prematurely vacated, as you've described.