by Joe Fitzgerald

Harrisonburg is a city of 60,000 or so with a City Council for a town of 15,000.

A quick check of Virginia’s cities finds that besides Harrisonburg, only Charlottesville among the larger cities has five council members. Most have seven, or six and a mayor, with Winchester’s nine and Virginia Beach’s eleven being the outliers.

The smaller council size, with only three votes needed to make major changes for the city, makes it more possible for a small clique of like-minded council members to make changes out of step with the city at large. The most unfortunate example of this is the Bluestone Town Center, passed by three members with less than three years of experience, combined.

No one would argue that a seven-member council makes fewer mistakes. But the extra vote needed on a seven-person council makes it a little less likely that inexperienced or ideological members will push through a project without any real deliberations.

The possible gain of more expertise on council would only be a start. The next step would be to move the voting so that elections driven by national campaigns no longer dominate. As it stands now, fewer than ten percent of the city’s voters effectively elect the council in the Democratic primary. Once nominated, those candidates win almost without scrutiny in elections where turnout is driven by presidential or U.S. Senate elections. I consistently vote for the Democrat in national and state elections, where one is choosing policies more often than people. But at the city level, a council elected based purely on ideology can lead to rudderless government by a council with no clear conception of how a city runs.

This isn’t an argument for a Republican city council. Indiscriminate tax cuts, book banning, and promotion of increased gun ownership have little to do with the needs of a city. But the same is true of housing decisions based on sloganeering and recreation decisions based on soft reparations, two of the failings of the council members up for reelection in two years.

One answer, the one I’d support, would be citizens petitioning the General Assembly to increase the size of the council and move the local elections to odd numbered years. Instead of electing three members on the coat tails of presidential campaigns, elect four in the state Senate year, 2027 in this decade. Elect three in the gubernatorial year, with 2029 the next possibility, considering the speed of General Assembly actions and city charter changes.

Part of this suggestion, increasing the size of council, has been suggested by a city official who claimed the idea as his own, probably after hearing about it from a mutual acquaintance. But without moving the elections, we’re just adding two ideologues to the council, not reforming the process.

There’s a widespread feeling in Harrisonburg that the city is moving in the wrong direction. Anyone who has watched a City Council meeting can understand why this is happening. Moving the elections and increasing the size of council might not bring us a better class of council members, but it would at least make them have to work for the jobs.

Joe Fitzgerald is former mayor of Harrisonburg. This column is republished with permission from his blog, Still Not Sleeping.