Well....I'm a little suprised how the College Station City council election turned out. Out of roughly 84,000 citizens in College Station, 5,422 voted for the Place 1 candidates. Turn out for the other two seats was slighly less.
John Crompton was re-elected for the Place 1 seat. Dennis Maloney beat out Ron Gay. And Lawrence Stewart, a new comer that had never even served on a College Station commitee, defeated Chris Scotti. The two incumbents that seemed to have the most "business sense" - are out. The neighborhood integrity, please don't build in or around my backyard group is in. This group, as a whole, appeared to consider the development community the "bad guys." Oh well.....
The winners did a good job of mobilizing SOME of the neighborhoods....especially those on the East side. I wish that the we, the citizens of College Station, could figure out how to get more people from different parts of the city to participate in elections. I realize this is not a College Station issue.... Voter apathy is an issue most city's deal with.
5 thousand voters was a great turn out compared to the city council race in Bryan. Only 849 people voted in the one contested city council race. ---Bryan's population is larger than College Station.
I wonder:
Would more people vote if College Station council seats represented specific districts within the city--similar to Bryan?
Would more people vote if council elections were timed to be held at the same time the national and state elections and/or primaries are held?
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Sondra: The one problem I see with there not being specific districts is that if one group mobilizes from a certain area, and really rounds up a ton of people, just from that one group... they can control the entire city. If there were definite districts, that could not happen. Go get 'em, women !