Guest Columnist
Congratulations to Mayor-elect Mark Kleinschmidt, and Town Council member Matt Czajkowski for a competitive mayor's election; and to Town Council members-elect Gene Pease and Penny Rich. Chapel Hill has elected its first new mayor in several years by what may be our town's closest margin, as well as two new Town Council members. It's time for Mayor Kevin Foy to lead the current Town Council in one of its most important upcoming tasks ... filling the Town Council seat vacated by Bill Strom.
Now that the regular elections are over, perhaps the mayor and Town Council can recommit to the logically inherent concept that elective offices are best elected by the citizens. I urge Mayor Foy and our current Town Council to decide quickly to arrange a special filing and election so "we the people" can elect our new council member to the open seat.
Placing the decision back with the citizens minimizes the political/ideological minefields for the Town Council, and fiscal concerns cannot outweigh the democratically elected leadership. The pre-election seat-filling discussion revolved around two alternatives under the law, one I call the "fifth-place candidate method," and other I call the "Town Council interview and appointment method."
In fairness to Czajkowski, he supported the fifth-place plan well before the election. I infer that he will, again, but also hope he will reconsider. While the "fifth-place candidate method" is actually based on an election, it only plausibly implies that whoever came in fifth in a four-seat election would also have come in fifth in a five-seat election. This is unlikely with the same candidates vying for five seats rather than for four seats.
The "fifth" place candidate was defeated for one of four seats for a four-year full term. If there had been a fifth open-seat in this Town Council election, I conservatively estimate that the "sixth-place" candidate would have placed "fifth" by between 228 to 449 votes for a fifth open-seat. Why? Because, we who vote for all seats would have individually chosen our top five choices while in the actual four-seat election, we stopped at four.
In the "Town Council interview and appointment method," the Town Council completely takes the elective process away from the voters and -- intentionally or not -- makes an appointment for their benefit as the Town Council rather than for us as citizens, undermining the point of elections. They may get lucky or not, but this carte-blanche could allow appointment of someone who placed seventh or lower in the voting order, or having pre- and/or post-election opportunists woo the council (as happened in Carrboro in 2005), or the council's debacle of appointing one who could potentially be sworn into office twice without being elected.
I want our elections to be about good ideas and not a rumble between upper-income beliefs and lesser-upper-income beliefs. There is a need to keep good fundraising from overpowering good ideas, and for allowing modest-income individuals a greater opportunity to participate in government. What we call "voter-owned elections" in Chapel Hill should be called "mind-over-money elections."
The Legislature grants the Town Council a wide range of legal options, some more democratic, ethical, and logical, than others. I am requesting from our Town Council the best decision -- that logically upholds the inherent concept that citizens democratically elect candidates in an ethically straightforward election format -- what I like to call real voter-owned elections.
Artie L. Franklin is a resident of Chapel Hill.
