Okay so I know
I'm a couple weeks behind on this one but we all know how crazy this time of
year can be. Good news however is this post is one I've been want to write
since a conversation I had with local pastor Mike Jones of Chillicothe's Agape
Fellowship. Mike asked many good questions regarding Chillicothe's local
government, but there was one that stood out for me. "What is the
difference between a council-at-large and what you did in the 4th ward?"
Many in local politics take this very important difference for granted, some
cities only have one or the other we in Chillicothe are fortunate to have both.
I have included
here a picture taken from the Chillicothe website which shows the divisions of
the City's Ward system. With the new council taking effect in January many of
the names of council members will soon be out of date the divisions however will
remain the same for several years to come. Here's the important things, each
the 6 wards have their very own representative, every citizen can call on their
representative when they have an issue pertaining to city ordinances operations
within city government as well as any questions or requests you can think of.
Now the entire City can if need be contact one of our city's three
Council-at-Large representative.
Much like the
Mayor, Law director, and City Auditor, Council-at-Large positions are voted on
by the entire city where as Ward positions are only voted on by their
respective wards. Example I ran for election in the fourth ward against
incumbent Dave Tatman. This meant that I only asked for votes in that ward, I
had many friends say they would vote for me but they lived in other wards and
so could not vote for or even against me. My friend Bill Betson however ran for
an At-Large position, he needed votes from the entire city of Chillicothe from
the first ward to the sixth ward.
Now I mentioned
how fortunate we are to have both forms of Council representative, and I will
tell you why. Take a look at cities like Columbus which have only At-Large
positions for City council members. That means that you could possibly have all
your council representatives from the same neighborhood, when that happens
council will work very hard for their own area of the city but not the rest of
the city. Say though that you find a city with only representatives and now
they each want what's best for their own neighborhoods but no one watches out
for the city as a whole.
Since Chillicothe
has two types of council members we can balance both extremes, in an ideal
setting each ward representative would work to better his ward and each
At-Large member would work for the city as a whole.
