Diversion Campaigns

This weekend, Mark Pino's column called out the School Board's debate of mandatory uniforms as a possible distraction to turn the public's interest away from other school issues. Welcome to the choir, Mark (see Wayne Who, Thursday, 2/28/2008).

This Tuesday, another diversion comes before the Kissimmee City Commission. Commissioner Jerry Gemskie proposes that the city be divided into two districts, East and West, with two commissioners serving/elected by each district. The Mayor would continue to be elected at-large.

First, this "districting" was labeled as a budget-saving move, as each of the "district" commissioners would have their salary reduced by 50%, because there would now be two commissioners serving each district's issues.

Then it became a "representation" issue, with the somewhat convoluted argument that allowing voters to elect 60% of their City Commissioners was somehow better than the 100% of City Commissioners they are able to elect today. The unstated elephant left in the room was that "someday someone is going to make us go to districts, so we should make the districts we want today rather than waiting for some outside party to do it for us."

We don't think that the cost savings argument holds much water, and we would prefer that our elected officials focus on other areas of the budget, rather than possibly opening the City Charter for revisions for the third time in a year.

As to the representation elephant, we hope that one of our other commissioners will ask the City Attorney some variation of the following question: "Mr. City Attorney, if an action is ever brought against the city calling for separating the city into districts, what is your level of confidence that you would be able to successfully argue before a trial judge that dividing the city into two districts, with two commissioners each, satisfies that requirement?"

We believe Mr. Smallwood is too professional to fall down laughing on the dais, but assuming that his answer is that the proposed districting would not satisfy any future redistricting requirement, that should be the end of the issue.

Time to move on to real issues.