Resolution re-forming city council on agenda

Topekans may get to vote on change to city manager form of government.

A resolution to place the city manager form of government on the ballot for Topeka voters will be considered by the Topeka City Council next week, its sponsor said Tuesday.

Councilwoman Betty Dunn has had the resolution drafted by the city attorney's office and said it is ready to go to the council.

If placed on the ballot and approved by the voters, the position of mayor, as now structured, would disappear. The present nine-member city council would be replaced with a five-member council. Each council member would be elected from a district representing one- fifth of the city.

All five council positions would be up for election at the same time once every four years. The council member elected by the most votes in that election would have the additional ceremonial honor of being named "mayor." Aside from representing the city in ceremonial functions -- such as ground breakings and ribbon cuttings -- the mayor would be a voting member of the council.

But the mayor also would be able to exercise a line-item veto.

To avoid the cost of a special election, Dunn is proposing to put the question on the ballot for the August 2000 primary election, the next regularly scheduled election.

And to avoid cutting any properly elected council members' terms short, she is proposing that the new system become effective in 2003. That way, the council members serving the even-numbered districts, who were elected last April, would be able to serve their full four- year terms.

The council members elected to serve the odd-numbered districts, up for election in April 2001, would be elected to serve two-year terms.

Dunn said many of the details of her proposal were patterned after recommendations from the citizens committee that spent six months studying the form of government. The committee didn't recommend the city manager form of government -- in fact, it specifically rejected it because of evidence that minorities lose power under that form of government.

But the citizens committee did recommend electing all council positions in the same year. The committee argued that doing so would concentrate the full attention of all the city's voters on the city election better than the present system, under which only half the council members are elected every two years.

Dunn said she has proposed in her resolution reducing the council to five members, but would be open to an amendment to make that seven members if the majority of the council felt more comfortable with that number.

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