(Editor’s note: Iolans will be asked in the April 6 city election whether they prefer a five-, seven- or nine-member city commission. This is the fifth in a series of articles detailing the issue.)
John McRae served as Iola’s mayor for 12 years as part of the three-member Iola City Commission.
The experience provided McRae a keen insight on how local governments function. It also prompted him to volunteer his service on a citizens committee last fall to look at Iola’s future governance.
The 14-member committee met on a weekly basis to consider the pros and cons of developing a five, seven- or nine-member governing body.
To put it bluntly, McRae’s experience on the committee “was an absolute nightmare,” he said.
What he hoped would be the logical discussion of the topics frequently degenerated into “having to hear 14 voices at once.”
The tone of the meetings also convinced McRae that having a nine-member city commission — eight commissioners and a mayor — would be prone to the same type of chaos.
“The real issue with representation lies with the quality of the commissioners than the quantity,” McRae said. “Iola would be much better with five good ones than nine ‘so-so’ ones. You can’t just throw numbers at something and think it will automatically be better.”
As former mayor, McRae is aware of the dedication required of the commission members outside of their twice-monthly meetings.
Representing Iola, he contends, requires each member to have a keen understanding of such things as the city’s electrical needs, the ability to serve both private residents and commercial businesses and industries.
“It requires dedication, cooperation and common sense,” McRae said.
And if a commission member is nonresponsive, it’s up to Iola’s voters to elect a better alternative.
CONTRARY TO popular belief, Iola has done remarkably well with a three-member commission, McRae said.
For years, the city has avoided crippling debt while maintaining low property taxes and competitive utility rates for its citizens, he noted.
“We are fortunate to have been served by an abundance of strong, dedicated leaders over the last century,” McRae said. “The city today is strong financially and has managed the public’s enterprise funds as well, if not better, than any other city in Kansas.”
McRae also agrees that Iolans spoke loudly at the ballot box last April when they voted to disband the existing city commission. He disagrees, however, that Iolans automatically favored a nine-member city council.
“I think what they were simply saying was ‘we no longer wished to be governed by a three-member body,’” McRae said.
A five-member commission would present a more functional environment, conducive to learning, compromise and consensus, he noted.
Because of Iola’s relatively small geographic footprint — it’s only a mile from State to Kentucky streets — the city should not have to be divided into voting wards, the former mayor said. Doing so, he contends, would have an adverse effect in that it could potentially exclude qualified citizens from being seated at any given time.
“The vast majority of our issues are not regional in nature,” he said. “While it’s true that we have at times been poorly represented, we don’t believe that this has anything to do with geography.”
IT WAS the action by advocates of a five-member city commission that triggered last year’s referendum, McRae noted.
Iolan Jim Talkington had approached city commissioners in late 2008 about drafting a charter ordinance to create a five-member city commission. Mayor Bill Maness favored the idea; commissioners Craig Abbott and Bill Shirley did not, which prompted Talkington and others to spearhead a petition drive to bring the issue to a citywide vote.
The petitioners’ original intent was to simply expand the commission from three to five, McRae said.
But because local voters cannot bring a charter ordinance to a vote — only the governing body can do that — their only option was to order the city to disband the existing city commission.
Once that was approved by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, the city had two options, courtesy of a “home rule” constitutional amendment: draft a series of charter ordinances setting the size of the incoming governing body and determine whether it would be a council or commission; or do nothing, which, by default would create an eight-member city council in April 2011.
“It would be gross negligence if the citizens allowed the default statute to dictate the specifics of our governing body without our studying the issue,” he said. “Regardless of the number of commissioners we seat, our future demands careful deliberation; not blind acceptance of the dictates of an obscure state statute.”
(Coming Tuesday: Iola could potentially have a governing body unlike any other in the state.)
