Council votes against reducing members

The number of city council members will remain at 12 for the foreseeable future.

Members, in a vote of eight to four, defeated the first reading of an ordinance introduced by councilman Tim Stutler during Monday night's city council meeting that would have ultimately reduced the size of the council from a dozen members to seven.

Glasgow is a third-class city operating under the mayor-council form of government. Kentucky Revised Statute 83A.030 allows second, third and fourth-class cities be composed of not less than six nor more than 12 members.

"Fellow council members, this isn't anything I take lightly because the last thing anyone of us would want to do is vote ourselves out of a job," Stutler said, "But in the spirit of public service, I think something that we need to address and look at closely and one of the reasons is this has been brought up to me several times by citizens around town, asking why we have 12 city council members and I really can't give them a square answer, other than the fact that it's always been that way."

Stutler proposed reducing the size of the council from 12 to nine effective Jan. 1, 2011, following the November 2010 election, and from nine to seven effective Jan. 11, 2013, following the November 2012 election.

"For the past couple of years, I've studied this, as well as some others, and come up with some things that I think are important points of information and I think are good reasons for us to consider this ordinance today," Stutler said.

He gave three major reasons why he was proposing a reduction in the size of the council.

The first was that compared to other Kentucky cities Glasgow has an inordinate number of representatives.

Of the 209 cities with mayor-council form of government, only five -- Campbellsville, Eminence, Glasgow, Hopkinsville and Somerset -- have 12, he said. Of the 207 mayor-council cities, 201 have eight or fewer, which is 97 percent, 183 have six or fewer, which is 88 percent.

In city manager-commission or mayor-commission forms of government almost 100 percent have six or fewer and only 2 percent of the 380 member cities of the Kentucky League of Cities have 12 council-commission members. Most Kentucky cities function with six members, Stutler said.

He argued there is no obvious correlation between the size of the representative body and city effectiveness is observed.

Second, he said, cutting the city council would save taxpayers' money. On average it costs approximately $15,000 per year for each council member including salary and benefits -- health and dental insurance. By cutting to nine from 2011 to 2013, the city will save approximately $90,000 in two years and by cutting to seven after 2013, the city will save approximately $75,000 per year.

The third reason Stutler gave was that city government no longer requires 12 council members.

The new 629-CITY telephone number along with the city Web page and e-mail gives the citizens of Glasgow an easy and effective way to register complaints and to get answers to their questions, he said. The new committee structure requires fewer members, Ten committees were reduced to four in a vote by the council earlier this year.

Seven seats still allow for a broad representation from the community as evidenced in other cities and help eliminate ties and makes it easier to have up to three members on a committee, he said.

Councilman Doug Isenberg was the most vocal opponent of the proposed ordinance.

"I'm just wondering how many of this body remember when we had six council members?" he asked. "The size of the city budget at that time was less than three-quarters of a million dollars. We were a much smaller city. Glasgow became a third-class city after the 1960 census. I think we had some forward-thinking individuals at that time because of one of the immediate benefits from doing that was that being a third-class our insurance rates were dropped a pretty good percentage. Now, in the mid-60s, this same group of leaders decided that six people was not enough to see after the needs and the questions that would arise all around the town and they voted to increase it to 12. In order to have representation throughout the city, it was divided into four wards. So you had someone in your neighborhood who represented you on the city council. There was plenty of work to do even in those days."

Isenberg said there is still a need for a larger council because members of the community need to be able to interact with them.

"As we have grown, yes, I would agree that we do have e-mail and we do have the city number. People are reluctant. They still call me. I don't know if they find you all enough, but, I don't mind. I'm happy to take their call and try to respond to it in a positive way," he said.

He also said in order to do a fair comparison, the council needed to be comparing third-class cities to third-class cities and budgets to budgets and overall the council members duties remain relevant.

"I believe when we have 12 sets of ears and eyes out in the community, that we can respond better and quickly and if we take enough interest in what we are doing," Isenberg said. "I do feel like it's not broke and not something that we need to fix right now."

In the vote, council members Rhonda Riherd Trautman, Linda Wells and Freddie Norris joined Stutler in supporting the ordinance.

Before the meeting Trautman gave reasons for her backing.

"I'm in support of it and I'm in support of it for a variety of reasons primarily as a cost savings in the long run, making a significant cost savings to the cost of doing business in this activity. I think we've asked department heads to cut back, especially in this last year, every person that has a business and household in this town has had to cut back and this is one way we can show that we're serious about that too," she said.

After the ordinance's defeat she said she was disappointed by the lack of support.

"I believe changes in the local economy in particular shine a light on the need for looking for more efficient ways to accomplish our goals as a city -- including the cost of the legislative body," Trautman said. "This ordinance was one way to do that. The size of council that was proposed in the ordinance is inline with approximately 97 percent of the cities in Kentucky who carry out their government duties with eight or less on their councils or commissions. Unfortunately there was not enough support on the council to pass the ordinance," she said.

Wells also said economic conditions were a reason to consider the reduction in council size.

"I am for the proposal. I feel like we are in an economic crunch right now and we're asking all departments to bite the bullet and reduce their budgets and I think it's only fitting that we look toward the future, not just right now, look toward the future and the need the city is going to have for funds and if we're going to continue to supply the citizens with the services they need we're going to have to also take a hard look at the way we do business as a council," she said.

The remaining eight council members voted against the ordinance.

Jeannie Scalise said rather than cutting the number of council members, perhaps they should cut back by giving part of their salary back.

Jim Marion agreed.

"If the basis is for economic purposes, I would be for reduction of compensation versus reduction of representation. If you cut the council pay in half, economics would be like you were paying six at the present rate. If we really think the issue is economics," he said. "Two heads are better than one. When we have certain critical issues, I want to make sure we have enough opinions to get it right."

Jimmy Ferrell said he didn't believe six members could adequately take care of the community.

But Stutler said citizens were giving him a different message.

"Citizens that I talk to really would like to see us take a leap and they also have a sense of frustration that there's 12 of us and that we never budget cut our own throats. But I again believe that we're all service-minded and we're not here for our own good, but for the good of the community," he said. "We're no longer in the days where there's no phone, no e-mail, no Internet and where you had somebody in your neighborhood you'd go to and voice your concerns. "

He said it is not the job of council members to administrate in the community.

"I would like to remind the council that we are not administrators, we are legislators," Stutler said. "It doesn't take 12 to write legislation and approve legislation. We are limited on what we can do. We can't go out and administrate things. That's breaking the law."

Just because it's been done the same way for a long time, doesn't mean it can't be changed, he said.

"We're not progressive thinkers. We're stuck in what we've always done and it's a real sense of frustration," Stutler said.