The March 2 elections for most of the Neighborhood Councils in our District are moving forward as planned. Contrary to rumos circulating, it was never proposed to postpone or cancel them.
Greig Smith submitted a motion this week in response to specific requests by Neighborhood Councils in my District who asked to have the authority over Neighborhood Council elections returned to them from the Clerks Office.
Since the elections were moved into the City Clerks office, we had received numerous complaints from Neighborhood Councils that they were poorly run and wrought with mistakes and problems.
Greig Smith agreed that Neighborhood Councils would benefit by running their own elections, and that they could do it better.
This would put up to $1.9 million – the funds allocated to the City Clerk for running the elections – into the Citys emergency reserves and hopefully help preserve Neighborhood Council funding from cuts. Considering the current budget crisis, the City Council is justified in searching for every available dollar in our effort to cover the $212 million budget deficit and avoid insolvency before July 1. This would have been a win-win.
It would have taken effect after the March 2 elections scheduled for most of the Neighborhood Councils in my District. Rumors and misunderstanding have led some in the community and the Neighborhood Councils to believe that shifting the funds and the election authority would cancel the March 2 elections. This is absolutely not true. The March 2 elections would have, and will, go forward as planned.
We were focused on future elections that could be returned to the Neighborhood Councils, saving as much as $1 million.
As Greig Smith have stated before, failure is not an option.
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Thanks for the info. from Councilman Greig Smith’s Office.