08-15-2011 CRC RPT Public Comments

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Charter Review Committee Meeting Date: 8 -15 -11 Item No.: 2 Comments to City of Riverside Charter Review Committee for August 2011 RECEIVED AUG 15 2011 City of Riverside Dear Committee Members, City Clerk's Office I have attended each of you meetings and would like to submit some comments and background information for your consideration. I am also including some questions for the city CFO and the city Attorney. On the subject of elections I have served on the Riverside County Election Observer Panel for two years and have organized a ward 2 candidate forum for my community. Your committee has been asking questions concerning "top vote" and "at large" elections. These two concepts has been the topic of the city council's Government Affairs Committee in the last few years and I believe it would be helpful for you to know the context in which it was considered. I am including a detailed report that I had written covering the chronological actions of the city in regards to a Code of Ethics complaint filed in 2007. It is not a story of the event upon which the complaint was based, but rather the series of events that occur in the aftermath and the significance. For example, in the Fall of 2007, ward 1 councilman Betro lost his re- election bid by three votes on the night of the election. He applied for a recount after which it was confirmed that he actually lost by 8 votes. During the week of the recount, an emergency meeting of the city Governmental Affairs Committee was called. This committee consisted of Schivone, Akison, and Betro. They were not happy with the outcome of the election and wanted to consider two major changes for how elections would be held in Riverside. First, they wanted to remove the conducting of elections from the County Registrar of Voters and use a private outside contractor. Second, they wanted to change the way we elect councilmen to a system where citizens of the wards would first nominate candidates from their ward, but that the actual election would be conducted "at large" or city wide. I believe this was being proposed to eliminate the possibility of a repeat of the Betro /Gardner election. Gardner ran a grassroots campaign, spending only $47K vs. incumbent Betro's over $200K. While Gardner made up for his short fall in money by going door to door on a Segway in ward 1, he could not have covered the whole city if the election were at large. The advantage of "at large" elections is clearly with the incumbents and their deep pocket supporters. The second example occurred in July of 2009, just after councilman Schiavone lost his election bid for county supervisor. A meeting was called by the Governmental Affair Committee to consider changing the city elections to a "top vote" system. The committee was chaired by