Dear George,

I feel strongly that it would be a mistake to move the City Council elections out of the May time slot. November elections would provide more voters, but we need more than that. What we really need are more voters who are tuned in to local issues. Informed and motivated voters are the ones who seek greater involvement in the City. The City needs more involved citizens on a continuing basis.

Piggybacking City Council elections onto Statewide or National elections in November is the wrong way to address the problem of low voter turnout. I believe that the voters who currently participate in May City Council elections are motivated by the issues. Recent activities such as candidate forums (City Council, School Board, 25th District Senate seat), citizen input forums (traffic calming, the Jefferson school building, school facilities) and public hearings (dog parks, the parkway, historic district issues) demonstrate that many citizens are interested in issues affecting our City's future.

We should be working to cultivate an ever growing, active and informed electorate because this will serve our community's interests in the long run. We need to be focusing our efforts on engaging more citizens in dialogue on important issues and in making the government of our City more accessible to a greater and more diverse number of citizens.

Our City will be best served if its leaders are selected by stakeholders who are interested and informed. Moving the elections to November does nothing to address that need.

Erin Garvey (electronic mail, November 13, 2001).