ANAHEIM : Bid to Create Council Districts Launched

Using a battered ironing board as a table, proponents of electing City Council members by district began their quest to get their measure on the November ballot Friday by collecting signatures outside City Hall.

Casting his alliance of civic groups as “grass-roots” activists who are taking on wealthy “special interests,” Matthew K. Bogoshian said at a press conference that scrapping the current at-large system and electing council members by districts would “open up the system” and allow neighborhoods to “hold their representative accountable.”

The group’s measure calls for dividing the city into four districts. Each would elect its own council representative, while the mayor, who is a member of the council, would continue to be elected at-large.

“This will bring people into the process, including disaffected voters that are so common in urban areas throughout our country,” Bogoshian said. “There are approximately 110,000 registered voters in the city. To campaign to all of them you must have money from special interests. With districts, it would be technically possible to walk precincts and talk to every voter in your district.”

Successful candidates in recent council elections have raised more than $200,000 in contributions, an amount that would be slashed enormously with district elections, Bogoshian said.

Among the groups supporting the measure at Friday’s conference were Anaheim HOME, a central city neighborhood group; Anaheim Political Action Committee, which is made up of mobile home residents, and Los Amigos, a Latino business group.

Opponents of the measure, including former council members Ben Bay and Miriam Kaywood, said it could result in gridlock on controversial projects.

They cited as an example the inability of the County Board of Supervisors to select a site for a proposed new jail, partly because no supervisor wanted it built in a populated area of his or her district.

Local Latino leaders first publicly proposed the measure earlier this year. They said it would make it easier to elect the first member of a minority group to the council. About one in three Anaheim residents is a minority, with most living in the central city.

Three of the councilmen live in Anaheim Hills, one in the central city and another in the west end.

A Times Orange County poll of 600 Anaheim residents last February showed that 68% favor district elections.

Council members agreed last month to place on November’s ballot measures that would limit their terms and contributions to their campaigns, but refused by a 3-2 vote to put the group’s proposal on the ballot.

To qualify for November’s ballot, the group will have to gather the signatures of about 10,000 registered voters who live in Anaheim by Aug. 7.