ORANGE : Group Seeks Change in Mayoral Election

A citizens committee has petitioned the City Council to draft a ballot initiative that would eliminate direct elections for the mayor.

The council will discuss the petition during its 3 p.m. meeting Tuesday. If adopted, the measure on the Nov. 8 ballot would ask residents if they want the mayor’s post rotated among the five council members for one-year terms.

Robert D. Mickelson, spokesman for the five-member committee, said direct elections waste time and money. Mayors spend a year of their two-year terms campaigning, and the city needs to call special elections when a sitting council member wins the mayor’s race, he added.

“It creates politics where politics aren’t really necessary,” Mickelson said.

Mickelson and the other members of the committee--Randy D. Bosch, Victor P. Calagna, Shirley L. Grindle and Scott E. Parker--have proposed criteria for the ballot measure.

They suggested that the appointed mayor be designated by a system of council seat numbers. Seat numbers would be assigned from one to five on the basis of seniority and each council member would take on the role of mayor for one year. Numbers for newly elected council members would be based on the number of votes received.

Mickelson emphasized that the campaign is not directed against any mayor “past, present or future,” he said.

Councilwoman Joanne Coontz, the only declared mayoral candidate to date, said she has no problems with the proposition “as long as the rotation system is formalized as part of the ballot measure,” she said.

Before direct elections were started in 1978, council members would elect the mayor by a system that led to cronyism, she said.

The system would become effective November, 1996.