Keegan Garrity talks to KVNU For the People host Jason Williams.
LOGAN — It has been a few years since the discussion first came up, that of changing Logan City Council’s set up from an at-large to a by-district representation.
It became a citizen-driven discussion topic for the city council a few years back. That led to a lengthy study and some recommendations made by the study committee to the council.
From there, the council went one direction, saying they would mull it over. Then the issue took another direction back to the citizens saying it should maybe go to the public for a vote.
On KVNU’s For the People program on Tuesday, former Logan city council candidate and local activist Keegan Garrity, who has been a proponent of the by-district plan, said there are both types of representation found in government.
“To maybe draw some comparisons between some other election systems, you think about a school board or a county council, those are by district, meaning you have to live in a certain area and be elected from that area. Then there are some that do a hybrid, I think the water district board is like that, where you have a couple at-large seats and some district based ones,” he said.
Garrity said he can’t take credit for this latest initiative. Another citizen, Erin Bennett, put this together.
“And when she heard about the different voting systems and what citizens could do about it, she learned that you could do a ballot initiative, basically, if you collect enough signatures, you can actually have something put on the ballot. So, citizens can decide how they feel about the issue.”
He said this is an opportunity for citizens to have a say in how council members are elected in Logan. They have until April 15th to gather the signatures.