Dear Mayor Keith and Council Members Ohtaki, Mueller, Carlton, and Cline: I plan to give the following testimony at your special meeting on Wednesday, but I wanted each of you to have it in advance so you each have time to think about it before your discussion on Wednesday. This also gives each of you time to ask me any questions that may come up as you consider my proposal. (I am familiar with the Brown Act and understand that, should any of you email me any questions, I should respond just to that person and not copy the others so as to avoid even the appearance of a Brown Act violation.) Mayor Keith and City Council Members: My name is Steve Chessin. I'm President of Californians for Electoral Reform and a nationally-recognized expert on electoral systems. I helped educate the City of Santa Clara Charter Review Committee on their options in the face of their City's CVRA lawsuit. They have converged on a proportional system using multi-member districts. I will be speaking at a forum on such alternatives this Saturday at 2pm at the Onetta Harris Community Center. I note that Kevin Shenkman's letter, the letter that prompted this special City Council meeting, does not demand that Menlo Park go to district elections. Mr. Shenkman asks for a discussion. Given that he proposed a cumulative voting remedy to the lawsuit he brought against the City of Santa Clarita, he seems open to options other than single-member districts and other than plurality voting. Of course, Menlo Park wants to avoid an expensive lawsuit, and passing the resolution of intent Wednesday night does put you on a 90-day path to adopt district elections using plurality voting that avoids a lawsuit and limits your liability to $30,000. While I do note that plurality elections can suffer from vote-splitting, where the person elected in a district is the one least preferred by a majority of the voters in that district, I am not asking you to not pass that resolution. What I am asking you to do is that, in addition to passing the resolution, and in parallel to the process of preparing an ordinance for district elections, that you open a dialogue with Mr. Shenkman. See if he is open to negotiating an agreement that (a) limits your liability to $30,000, (b) gives you more time to explore your options, (c) allows you to prepare a two-article charter for the June 2018 ballot that contains a mutually-agreed-upon solution, should you find one that is better than single-member districts using plurality voting, and (d) should the charter proposal fail at the June 2018 election, still gives you time to then adopt an ordinance for district elections. (Charters that further voting rights can be voted on in June elections.) There is no need to rush this. You won't be electing councilmembers until November 2018 anyway. That's more than a year away. Reach out to Mr. Shenkman to see if he's willing to give you more time to develop the best solution for the City of Menlo Park, one that doesn't suffer from vote-splitting. Both my organization and Fairvote are happy to be resources for you, at no cost to the City. Thank you for considering my proposal. Sincerely, --Steve Chessin President, Californians for Electoral Reform www.cfer.org steve.chessin_at_(domainremoved) 1426 Lloyd Way, Mountain View, CA 94040 (408)-276-3222(w), (650)-962-8412(h) Received on Mon Oct 02 2017 - 23:05:10 PDT
