[Mpls] At-Large City Council Members

[ken bradley]

Hello Minneapolis Folks,

As someone that has lived in numerous neighborhoods across our city (too numerous to count) and now resides in the Kenny Neighborhood (SW), I understand David's concern about having At-Large council members that end up being another vote for SW, and agree that should be a concern, but also see advantages to such a system. 

The current system already gives too much representation to SW and all the other more affluent neighborhoods in our city, and a big reason for that is that more often then not these communities have a higher voter turnout, which makes politicians pay more attention to those neighborhoods. I am not saying this is the motivating factor for all elected officials, but it has to play a significant role in their decision making process. 

On one hand, having At-Large candidates could be beneficial for turning out under represented communities because having candidates on the ticket that share similar ethnic background or represent an under represented community could be used as a motivator to turnout voters and help other candidates as well. Our current At-Large Boards, School, and Park, by percentage are more diverse then our current city council, if you excluded sexuality. 

On the other hand, our School Board which is elected at large showed us that poorer communities in our city will have the most schools closed in the next two years. Maybe this makes sense, (I am not an expert on this issue) or it could be it was considered the path of least resistance by the School Board. Because wealthier communities in our city would have had more resources to fight such closings, then poorer communities. I would almost guarantee if you compared a voter turnout list with the schools being closed, that you will see very few schools being closed in higher voter turnout precincts-districts. 

I can see both sides of this arguement.

Ken Bradley 

Kenny Neighborhood (Formerly of Corcoran, Nokomis East, Standish, Phillips, Whittier, Downtown, and so on, and so on)





		
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 All your favorites on one personal page – Try My Yahoo!