Two More City Council Districts Are Proposed

A proposed initiative that would both increase the number of San Diego City Council districts from 8 to 10 and also cut council office budgets was introduced Monday by sponsors who say they expect to begin circulating petitions next month.

The main proponent of the initiative is Neil Good, an administrative aide to Supervisor Leon Williams and a likely candidate next year for the District 8 City Council seat vacated last month by Uvaldo Martinez, who was forced to resign.

Good, who says the initiative is an outgrowth of community sentiment he has heard while promoting his candidacy, said a committee called Citizens for Council Reform is being formed to run the initiative campaign.

If the group can gather 54,454 signatures of San Diego registered voters by early June, the initiative would qualify for the ballot next November. For purposes of cutting council office budgets, the measure would take effect in July, 1988, though the first election for an expanded City Council wouldn’t occur until 1989.

Good said the City Council was expanded to its present size of nine members, including the mayor, in 1963, when the city had a population of about 600,000. In that instance, the City Council voted to place a measure on the ballot. Since then, he said, the city has grown by 40%, to more than 1 million residents.

“The city is now more diverse and more spread out geographically,” Good said. “A City Council member today is more removed from the citizens because the districts are so much larger.”

Not only would the addition of two districts help more minority candidates get elected to the council, Good says, but the initiative also would benefit the city’s fastest-growing areas because it requires the City Council to consider community plan boundaries when drawing new council district lines.

In order to make a larger City Council politically palatable, Good said, it was necessary to cut back on the size of the office budgets of council members and the mayor. Those budgets are used to pay for everything from salaries to postage stamps, and Good said they have increased 88%, or slightly more than $1 million, in the last six years.

Under the initiative, the combined City Council office budgets would revert to their fiscal 1985 level, or about $2.3 million, even with the addition of two council members. Annual increases would be tied to the Consumer Price Index, up to a maximum of 4% a year.

The mayor’s office, though also tied to the 1985 level, would be allowed yearly increases as high as 8%.

“A lot of the crisis in confidence stems from the extravagance they’ve (the City Council) had,” said Good, who also worked as an aide to Williams when he was on the City Council. “I know what you can get away with--and what you can’t--in those offices.”

Of the proposed budget reductions, Good said, “People won’t vote for it (the initiative) unless it has spending limits.”