As children, we begrudgingly learned how to compromise with our siblings and peers. As adults, citizens and government officials, we often forget about such obvious life lessons. This coming year, the city of Austin and its residents are going to need to start compromising.
Each member of the Austin City Council has elected one person to make up the seven-member Charter Revision Committee, and over the summer, this group has been discussing plans to change the way Austinites elect council members.
Nearly every large city in Texas - Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and El Paso - uses a "single-member" voting system. In this type of system, which is similar to how we elect state representatives, voters are divided into districts for elections, and they can only vote on a council member to represent their respective districts.
By contrast, an "at-large" system, which Austin has, allows all of a city's voters to choose all of the council members. This type of system is more common among smaller cities and towns in Texas than in cities as big and rapidly growing as Austin. Being at such an awkward stage in its development, Austin would do best to adopt a system similar to that of Houston and Corpus Christi.
These cities use a combination of both systems, meaning that in an election, all city residents get to vote on "X" amount of at-large council members. Then, within each district, these same voters also get to choose one council member to represent their individual districts. In this approach to voting, we see big-city style divisions while still holding on to small-town unity.
Austinites will likely vote in either the May 2008 or November 2008 election on whether to change Austin's voting system after 36 years of having the same system.
Austin residents as a whole have voted against the City Council's past seven proposals to change to a single-member voting system. So let's try some give and take: We, Austinites, will give up some of our at-large council members if the city promises not to take them all away.
Examining the single-member system Pros In Austin's current at-large system, several council members live in the same district. A single-member system would force representatives to be more evenly spread throughout the community.
Single-member districts could help create closer bonds between a council member and his or her community. With closer bonds in reach, we could see previously silent community members - especially those in underrepresented communities - come to the foreground to raise issues.
Will we finally see more of an East Austin voice?
Cons Residents of each district would only be able to go through one council member rather than any one of the six.
Council members are likely to focus only on issues in their district, rather than those that affect the entire city.
A single-member system is inherently flawed because it has potential to create factions in the council.
Could this lead to an East versus West Austin showdown?
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