If a Northampton resident contacts his/her council member requesting a particular action, and that council member says, "no," where does that leave the resident? Not represented. If that council member says, "yes," as Councilor Bardsley did when approached, then a resident is appropriately represented by an elected official, regardless of whether that elected official agrees with the resident or not.
Six residents brought forth a Best Practices proposal. I don’t recall that these six implied that they are representing anyone other than themselves. That said, why couldn’t their original proposal have gone forth in the existing system as the Volkmann et al Proposal, to stand on its own, without creating a special committee? In my view, Councilor Narkewicz and others could then have worked with the Ordinance Committee in crafting such a resolution if they felt compelled to do so. The process is now becoming increasingly convoluted because of the competing resolution brought forth by Councilor Narkewicz that has required both conciliation and the creation of an extra layer of government. Ironically, Councilor Bardsley attempted to REPRESENT some residents via the existing system, and he was obstructed from doing so. Regarding the formulation of the new committee, some now imply that we should find a way to use the existing system, "as well as we can," in order to select citizen members, and this represents to me a paradox.
As well I think it erroneous if anyone is presuming that some Northampton council members ran unopposed because the electorate supports existing members 100%. In the two wards where the incumbents were opposed, the results were very close. In the other wards there are likely an infinite number of reasons why people chose both to run and not to run. Across the city 61% of the electorate chose not to vote, but how does anyone get to definitively claim why that is so?
As for the theory currently bandied about, that whoever runs against Higgins will get 30% of the vote, how do we accommodate that 30%? Should that group be ignored and marginalized? Should Higgins serve only the interests ofthe 4,000 who elected her? In fact the 4,000 people who voted for Higgins have effectively decided for the other 25,000 residents of Northampton what the course of our community should be for the next two years. Is that not a minority deciding somewhat autocratically for the majority?
