There is no single formula for creating a city council that effectively represents the community. The most important thing is to have competent, thoughtful, engaged representatives — and there are many paths for arriving at that destination.
With that being said, the idea of electing Vancouver City Council members by district is an intriguing one. Residents should have an opportunity to weigh in on the proposal this November with an advisory vote.
That vote would gauge public opinion about a recommendation from the Charter Review Committee, an advisory group that examines the city’s governing document every five years. Among a slate of recommendations, the review committee supports dividing Vancouver into three districts for city council elections. Districts would vote on candidates during the primary election, and one of the top two candidates then would be elected in a citywide ballot. Each district would be represented by two councilors.
“Districting will promote demographic and economic diversity on the city council,” Esther Schrader, a member of the committee, said while presenting the proposal to the council. “The current council is pretty much lumped together geographically … there’s still a lot of west side representation, compared to east side or north-center.”
That is not necessarily a bad thing. If councilors have a robust vision for Vancouver, it should not matter where they reside. And voting by district could eliminate some worthy candidates. As Councilor Linda Glover said: “Could this in fact be a bit limiting? If they happen to live in the same district, we’ve lost that resource.”
But there also are arguments in favor of geographic diversity. Under the current system, the seven members of the council could, in theory, live on the same street, diminishing the breadth of viewpoints on the council. Five years ago, voters approved changes to the county charter that instituted district voting for county councilors, and those changes have worked well.
Vancouver is the fourth-largest city in Washington, encompassing a broad range of experiences and backgrounds. Tacoma, the third-largest city, has a mayor and eight other council members, with five of them elected by district and three chosen at-large. Bellevue, the fifth-largest city, has seven council members, all elected at-large.
Yakima, which has a population of 94,000, adopted district voting following a 2015 federal court ruling that said at-large voting disenfranchised the city’s large minority population. Voters that year elected three Hispanic councilors, the first in the history of a city where more than 40 percent of residents identify as Hispanic.
Vancouver does not have the same kind of racial diversity; in our mind, the question would revolve around representation from all regions of the city. One example of the benefits could be found in east Vancouver, where residents long have been underrepresented on the city council and where there is no shortage of complaints about the area largely being ignored by city leaders since it was annexed in 1997.
Having a councilor who lives in the same part of the city can give residents a heightened sense that their concerns about a cavernous pothole or a lack of sidewalks will be taken seriously. On the other hand, residents of east Vancouver or elsewhere are free to run for the council under the current system.
In other words, there is no clear answer about whether voting by district would be beneficial. We are curious to know what voters think.
