Pomona Voters Will Decide on Major Changes to Council

Voters will decide Tuesday whether to expand the City Council and change the method of electing its members.

Proposition M asks whether council members should be elected by district instead of citywide, the current practice. Two other measures, Propositions N and O, give voters alternatives if Proposition M passes.

Proposition N would create seven council districts, and council members would choose a mayor from among themselves. Proposition O would create six council districts and provide for the mayor, as the board’s seventh member, to be elected in a citywide vote.

The city is divided into four council districts. Council members must live in their districts, but are elected at large. The mayor, who acts as a member of the council and presides at its meetings, also is elected by the entire city. Council members Nell Soto, C. L. (Clay) Bryant and Tomas Ursua have pushed for district elections.

Soto said a district system would produce more community participation. She said candidates would find it cheaper and easier to run in a district than to campaign for votes throughout the city. In addition, she said, enlarging the council would give each member a smaller area of the city to serve, making it easier to meet the needs of constituents.

Soto said she also favors Proposition N, allowing seven council members to appoint a mayor from among themselves. That sort of system works well in Pasadena and other cities, she said.

But Bryant, who is fighting to retain his seat in a recall election June 5, favors an elected mayor. His campaign committee is posting signs in the city urging a “yes” vote on Propositions M and O.

Ursua, who has urged district elections as a means of increasing minority representation, was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the city in 1985 by the Southwest Voter Rights Education Project. The suit noted that Pomona has never had a black council member although the 1980 census said 19% of the population was black.

The courts upheld the city’s at-large election system, but the council decided to submit the issue to voters anyway.

Although there has been no organized campaign to retain the current system, Mayor Donna Smith said she prefers it. Smith said she would rather vote on all council members than elect a single council member from her own neighborhood.

If approved by voters, the district system would take effect with the next council elections in March, 1991.