B

The city’s listening roundtable held Tuesday evening included a number of attendees who had similar opinions on the topic of voting by ward, but differed in their reasoning behind those feelings.

Before comments were heard, Morristown Mayor Gary Chesney summarized the reason for the meeting.

“We’re actually here to find out what folks’ opinions are about an item that we’re facing: it’s time to upgrade our Charter. If you were to read the Charter today, you could see a lot of things that were written back when the Charter was first written back in 1915, or whenever it was that particular Charter came into being. So there is some considerable amount of upgrading to do.”

Chesney’s comments about the consideration to move city elections to November in hopes of increasing voter turnout were agreed upon by those who stepped to the microphone.

For the most part, councilmembers did as the name of the meeting implied and simply listened.

There were two questions, however, to which Chesney responded.

To the question of term limits and without them the possibility of complacency – Chesney said, “My view on that is that we already have term limits, we just call them elections. Our term is four years; at the end of four years, your term is up. If you want to go again, you ask the public ‘Is it OK for me to serve again?’ If its OK, they put you in, if it’s not they vote you out.”

To the question of whether the ward/at-large election option could be put to a voter referendum – Chesney said, “Charter changes from referendums. The way this works, your charter goes through you state representative and he takes it to the state legislature and they either approve or disapprove your charter change.”

The mayor added later in the meeting that a number of phone calls have come in to councilmembers about the ward-specific election issue – “We hear from a lot of folks, not just this group here,” he said.

“What we have now are four districts – four wards – and the wards have been in place for a long time … for four of the seats you are required to live in the district. The law recently changed this past year. (Under the change) if you are nominated and serve a particular district, only the people who live in that district may vote for you. The concern we had here is that if that changes, if that goes into effect, all of our citizens will be prohibited from voting for half their councilmembers.

“Even more, councilmembers are no longer answerable to the entire city; they will be answerable to one-half of one-fourth of city voters, that would be the impact of that. TML told us there were 17 other cities affected in this way.”

He added that Kingsport, Bristol, Johnson City, Greeneville, Elizabethton and Oak Ridge all hold at-large elections.

“We want to get a feel for what the public thinks about still being able to vote for all councilmembers,” he said before discussing an option for at-large elections.

“So when the three council seats come up, instead of you getting 10 people running for three seats and you take the three top vote-getters, we’re considering instead of ward numbers, we have at-large seat numbers. If you want to run, you declare which at-large seat you want to run for, so it’s not a cluster of 4, 6, 10, 12 candidates. There are a lot of things to consider,” Chesney said.

Allen Brooks was the first to speak, stating “This alternative allows anyone outside of any ward to run for other wards and (be) voted in by all voters. This is not, I repeat, fair representation of each ward to elect their own candidates because the population in another ward may (be) larger or smaller than any other ward. It would allow larger population wards to instill their candidate instead of candidate that the ward-specific wants. How, I ask, is this fair representation? … the reason the constitution gives each state two senators, voted in by state, is because of this very reason: smaller populations must have fair representation.”

He espoused the opinion that councilmembers should “live in that ward and be elected by members of that ward only, just our like county commissioners. This is a matter of democracy and representation,” he said.

Chesney responded: “How you elect your local folks is a local decision. The state law says if you elect by district and require a district is when you have to vote by district. But if you don’t, state law doesn’t make you do that. Local elections are local decisions.”

Pedigo responded: “Everything that this gentleman just said is true. There are other ways of looking at it, but everything he said is exactly right.”

Shavone Lovell, president of the Hamblen County Branch, NAACP and speaking on behalf of the organization, said in response to Chesney’s comments about assigning at-large seats a number: “That sounds like stacking the vote to me. That sounds like if four people wanted to run – and four other people wanted to run – these four people could get together and say, ‘I’m going to run for 1, 2, 3 and 4 so we can stack the vote and we can make sure that we get elected,’ and that leaves out the other people who may want to get elected.

Lovell then read from a prepared statement.

“While the idea of an at-large city council may seem enticing on the surface, it’s imperative that we carefully consider the consequences of such a shift. Our ward-based system ensures a level of accountability and representation that would be jeopardized by moving to an all at-large model. When candidates are required to live in the ward they represent, it establishes a direct connection between them and their constituents, and that’s the purpose of the wards.

“I believe if the ward also votes for them, then that’s another level of accountability that we’re adding to that – where you are not just voted by all of the city, you are beholding to your constituents in that ward, meaning that you need to serve them, that you need to listen to them, that you need to answer their e-mails when they e-mail you,” Lovell said.

“Shifting to this at-large could also lead to neglect in certain wards which concerns me greatly when I think about the fact that in this scenario they’re talking about, all of the candidates could live in the west end or the east end of town and then the constituents on the east end don’t have a say-so and don’t get heard as loudly because we live on this end of town. I can’t say that enough.”

Lovell also questioned whether adequate research had been done on other cities who utilize the at-large election option and whether their citizens were satisfied with the process.

“Here’s the thing that I think we continue to do over and over … decisions continue to be made for us without all of the information. I don’t think we should make these decisions in the dark … it makes sense to have accountability,” Lovell said.

Ward 4 resident Rusty Smith opined, “I like the ward-specific as opposed to the at-large – but I want to give an example of why I do, and it’s a very recent example. The folks in the Morningside community have been dealing with this Shannon Greene property up on East AJ Highway, and at a recent meeting, Mr. (Al) A’Hearn, who represents the ward I live in, voiced his opinion against what was going on … and I’m afraid if we have at-large seats, then we won’t get as much local representation on the things that affect our neighborhood.”

Dennis Alvis, former two-term city councilmember and county commissioner, addressed the council with the singular voiced opinion in favor of at-large council elections.

“I think you would get a bigger pool of candidates if it were at large,” Alvis said. “Even though I lived in a district in the Cherokee Park area, I had as many phone calls from people across town as I did the people of my district. If I’m going to vote for a tax increase I’m voting for the whole city, I’m not just voting for my ward so I think I represent everybody and I hope I did.”

Two of the speakers, Charles Cook and Rob Burke, discussed their previous campaigns for council and mayor, respectively during their arguments for ward-specific councilmember elections. Burke also issued a challenge to attendees to become more involved with council matters by attending more public city meetings.