Proposed City Council change sparks debate

Some of Mitchell’s most experienced politicians clashed this week over a proposed change to the structure of the City Council.

Dusty Johnson, chairman of the state Public Utilities Commission, and Mike Vehle, a state senator, presented ideas Monday evening to the City Council from the Focus 2020 Governmental Structures Subcommittee. Focus 2020 is a volunteer group formed last year to issue wide-ranging recommendations for the future of the Mitchell area.

One of the subcommittee’s proposals is changing two of the eight City Council seats to at-large positions, and reducing the number of wards in the city from four to three. City residents would then be represented not only by the two council members from their ward, as they are now, but also by the two at-large council members.

“It gives you four councilors to work with, because you’ve got the two from your ward, and the two at-large,” Vehle said. “So it encompasses a little bit more of the benefits of both.”

Johnson said at-large council positions have worked well for Sioux Falls.

“One thing that people on the council seem to like is that at-large councilors can be a little bit of a political counterweight to a very strong-personality mayor,” Johnson said. “Those people have the same constituency, they have the same geographic base, and in some respects, they maybe have more leverage.”

The presentation from Vehle and Johnson, both Republicans, lasted about 18 minutes and covered numerous other recommendations for city government. Most of the remaining 12 minutes allotted for the issue were consumed by a back-and-forth discussion that resembled a debate tournament and pitted Vehle and Johnson against City Councilman Mel Olson.

Olson, a Democrat and former state legislator, opposes changing two of the council seats to at-large positions. He said the election of two at-large council members would essentially create three chief executives, because the at-large council members and the mayor would all be elected from the city as a whole.

“I guess I don’t understand why we’d want three mayors,” Olson said, “because that’s in essence what you’re doing.”

An at-large candidacy would be a burden on the time and resources of people interested in running for those positions, Olson said, because they would have to campaign across the whole city instead of just in their own ward. Participation in the electoral process could suffer as a result, he said.

In response, Johnson disclosed that the recommendation from the subcommittee was actually a compromise. Some subcommittee members wanted to propose an entirely at-large council, while others wanted to retain the existing ward system. Johnson also disagreed with Olson’s “three mayors” criticism and said that, in other cities that have at-large council positions, he doesn’t know of anybody who thinks of at-large council members as extra mayors.

Vehle said at-large positions could increase rather than decrease electoral participation, because people who cannot beat the two council members in their own ward could still run for an at-large position.

Olson countered that at-large council members would probably be less responsive to the “neighborhood issues” that ward-elected council members are often in tune with. Vehle disagreed and reiterated his belief that responsiveness could improve, because residents who are unhappy with the responsiveness of council members in their ward could take their grievances to the at-large council members.

Undeterred, Olson compared Mitchell’s wards to the state’s legislative districts and said the state would “never consider” changing to at-large legislative positions.

“It would be all Sioux Falls, all Rapid City, all Aberdeen if we went at-large for the state, and we would lose out,” Olson said.

Johnson said Olson’s comparison was too generalized, and he cited legislative District 20 — consisting of Davison and Aurora counties — as an example. Because of at-large representation within the district, Johnson said, the city of Plankinton in Aurora County benefited from all three of the district’s legislators fighting to reopen its juvenile treatment facility in recent years. Had the district been divided into ward-like sub-districts, Johnson said, Plankinton may have only had one representative to work with.

“In some respects, I think it’s a little bit too simplistic to say ‘at-large is bad,’ or ‘at-large isn’t.’ ” Johnson said. “I think you really need to look at the specific geography you’re talking about.”

Mayor Lou Sebert eventually diverted the discussion to other topics. When the half-hour allotted for the discussion was over, Councilman Jeff Smith said he’d like Vehle and Johnson to come back in the future to help the council consider each of the subcommittee’s recommendations.

The subcommittee’s other recommendations for the city of Mitchell are hiring a city manager, improving the city’s strategic planning process, requiring candidates for city offices to file campaign-finance reports, televising City Council meetings, improving the city Web site, and revising city committees to make them more accessible and transparent to the public.

A written report detailing all of the recommendations is available at www.Focus2020.org.

Tags: focus 2020, city council, dusty johnson, mike vehle, mel olson, mitchell city council, news, local