Mingus Mapps Town Hall 7.19.22 - Charter Response Notes
Mingus Mapps is one of our Portland City Commissioners, and Portland Party strongly encourages you to follow him on Facebook because he gives his own weekly “Top 5” and usually provides a lot of pertinent information on how you can stay informed or get involved. He also hosts a monthly town hall event that will be later shared on YouTube, like this one. We encourage you to watch the whole thing but we are focusing on his responses to Charter Review questions with these notes, which start at the 17:50 mark on this video, until about the 30 minute mark. More questions from constituents come around the 37 & 52 minute marks.
Current form of government is like having 5 different mayors due to the different bureaus they oversee
Oftentimes, multiple bureaus need to work together! Homelessness is a big example of this:
Trash, parking, parks, etc. are all different bureaus with different oversight for one campsite
After a year of work by volunteer charter commission, came up with a set of proposals:
Hiring a city manager - how most other cities get around bureau problem
Increase number of people who serve on city council - mayor + 4 since early 1900s
Charter commission picked 12 - not sure if 12 is the right number but definitely time for more voices on council
Most cities would select neighborhood based districts and have a single council member per district
Charter commission is proposing multi-member districts
4 districts in the city, 3 representatives per district
Outer East Portland will still feel under-represented
How we elect representatives is also a proposed change - Rank Choice Voting
You would vote like this for instance:
Mingus is my top choice
Rubio is my second choice
Hardesty is my third choice
Not completely unheard of, but combination of multi-member PLUS rank choice is!!
Have not seen anywhere in US; Mingus argues anywhere in world
May work, may not work!
Mingus used to model electoral systems and this is concerning to him as we are looking to stabilize ourselves with a form of government is well-tested and well-understood
Asking questions, doing research to find out more about these combined models
5 major reforms - should be 5 separate votes (or more!)
Take it all or leave it all - unfortunate!
Perhaps inconsistent with letter of the law - PBA lawsuit
Multiple committees supporting and against the proposal
Mingus is staying informed and communicating with various groups and will continue to do public events like this town hall to keep citizens apprised of ideas going around
City manager and rank choice voting are two very separate issues
Charter reform - every 10 years a volunteer commission is formed to review and make suggestion to bring to ballot vote
City council can put charter reform on the table at any time
Mingus looking into seeing if he can get a consensus w/ current council if this doesn’t pass
There’s nothing council can do at this point in the charter review / ballot process and would have to bring different proposal at a later date
Ballot initiative route - any citizen can get it put on the ballot with enough signatures
Mingus will be focused on next steps if it does not pass; he is not involved in saying vote yes or no
Can city council put city manager as a stand-alone ballot question on top of charter question? No response from Mingus
Why make perfect the enemy of good? Pass and tweak later. No response from Mingus