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Districts — Wendy Hickey, Orange City planning and zoning analyst, and Debbie Renner, Orange City clerk, display a map of the districts.
ORANGE CITY MAP
New districts — Here are the new City Council districts for Orange City. Although no City Council members will lose their jobs immediately, starting with the municipal election this fall, for the at-large seat and the District 4 and District 5 seats, the candidates will have to live in the areas they want to represent. Anyone can run for the at-large seat, or the mayor’s job, when it comes up for re-election in 2011. Currently, among the five council members who represent districts, only Tom Abraham lives in the district he represents. The five districts were designed to have about 2,100 residents each.
BEACON GRAPHIC
Where they live — The residences of the current members of the Orange City Council are indicated on this map: A is the home of Mayor Harley Strickland, B is the residence of Tom Laputka, C is the home of Paul Rasch, D is the residence of Don Sherrill, G is the home of Jeff Allebach, E is the home of Jim Mahoney, and F is the home of Tom Abraham. Only Abraham currently lives in the district that represents his seat on the City Council. At election time this year or in 2011, all the other district council members must either leave office, run for one of the two at-large offices: mayor or District 6, or run for a new district seat where they live. A map of the districts is below.
... now 4 of 7 council members can’t run for re-election
By Jen Horton
posted Jun 15, 2009 - 2:56:11pm
To bring government closer to the people, the Orange City Council has disqualified four of its seven members from running for re-election to their seats.
Earlier this year, Orange City residents voted to switch to single-member districts, to ensure the City Council would include representatives from all parts of the city.
Last week, the City Council approved a map that carves the city into five districts. The problem is, current City Council members live in only three of them.
Because of the way the map is drawn and the districts are numbered, at least two of the current City Council members have kicked themselves out of office this year.
And, it was on behalf of the citizens they did so.
Plotting where the current City Council members live, on the new district map, shows why a majority of voters thought the change was needed.
Four members of the seven-member council live in one district. Two live in a second district. One lives in a third district, and two areas of the city have no representation.
About 10,800 folks live in Orange City. The council districts were designed to each have about 2,100 people.
Mayor Harley Strickland said district elections were a big part of his platform in his mayoral campaign, and he was pleased to see voters agreed.
Breaking down the areas and having representation from your neighborhood makes political involvement more accessible to the average resident, the mayor said.
“We’ve got a society where people don’t even know their neighbors,” he added.
Strickland said door-to-door campaigning, grass-roots ventures, truly knowing your representatives, and having elected officials speak on your behalf are vital to the principles the country was built on.
Strickland said assuring the council includes members from now-underrepresented areas will bring in new blood, and reduce the intimidation and cost factors for City Council candidates.
“The expense is reduced,” he said. “Running for office for 20,000 people is significantly different than running to represent 2,000 people. I think it becomes more possible, more doable.”
Once the district lines were drawn, council members assigned numbers to the districts by picking numbers from a hat. That’s when four council members were ruled out of their current seats. Their current seat numbers don’t match the number of the district where they live.
City Clerk Debbie Renner said the council wanted to do things on the up-and-up, with no possible accusations of gerrymandering or fixing districts.
“I actually thought it was pretty brave of them to pick districts that way,” she said.
Council Member Jeff Allebach said the way the districts were numbered should prove council members are not in this for their political careers.
“We didn’t build the districts to keep any council members’ jobs,” Allebach said. “We built this according to the wishes of the voters.”
Allebach hopes district elections will encourage new blood on the council, and new interest in political office.
“Maybe it will encourage variety,” he said.
Council Member Donald Sherrill said he didn’t agree with the need for district representation. Sherrill is one of three council members who won’t be able to run for re-election to his current seat this fall.
“Lil’ ol’ Orange City did not need redistricting,” Sherrill said. “There’s only 10,000 people in the whole city. There’s only 5,000 registered voters.”
In district voting, Orange City residents will cast ballots in only three races: their district race, the citywide mayoral race, and the race for one other at-large seat. Currently, residents vote in all seven City Council races.
“The people lost a lot of the clout they had,” Sherrill said.
He is not sure if he will run again.
“I’ve already served eight years,” Sherrill said.
Council Member Paul Rasch, who was appointed this year to fill the unexpired term of Donald Sandford, favors district voting, even though it means he won’t be able to run for re-election to his current seat.
Rasch was the chairman of the Charter Review Committee that initially recommended the districting.
He said the goal was to create compact areas, where a political candidate could, theoretically, walk door to door meeting his constituents.
“This is really important,” he said. “Local government is really the place you can make things happen.”
Reader Comments
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Residents of John Knox don't use the services that residents outside of the Village do.
When the previous City Manager was called or told in person about problems he ignored them.
The problems we were having speeding , code enforcement , public works problems , garbage collection problems etc, were going unheeded and John Knox residents have that stuff handled internally.
So, John Knox Village residents voted for incumbents who weren't holding McCue's hand to the fire.
Just look at the voting results from the two polling places that were used in the last city election. All four incumbents had far more votes at the John Knox polling site and all four challengers had far more votes at the Wava Hall polling site.
Only Mr. Allebach won re-election which I was happy about. The other three incumbents lost.
Bringing Mr.McCue back led to this.
Now, we finally have a City Manager in Chester Murray who cares about residents complaints and takes immediate actions to address them.
If Mr. McCue had chosen this path he would still be City Manager and Mr.Yebba , Mr. Erwin and Mr. Storke would still be on the council in my opinion.
I hope Mr.Sherrill will run for the open seat because I believe he is needed.
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