ELECTION: CITY VOTERS WILL DECIDE TWO ISSUES

If voters are a bit confused when they go to the polls Tuesday, it won't surprise Cape Girardeau City Attorney Warren Wells.

Cape Girardeau voters will decide two issues Tuesday: whether to annex Twin Lakes Subdivision, situated west of the city limits near the intersection of Hopper Road and Interstate 55, and whether to approve ward boundaries and related city charter changes to enable ward city council elections next year.

The annexation issue is a relatively simple one. The measure, if approved, would expand the city limits and add about 100 households to the city's population.

A majority of Twin Lakes residents last fall petitioned the city for annexation. If the measure passes by a simple majority in both the city and in the area to be annexed, the annexation will be approved.

If the issue fails in either the city or Twin Lakes, then a second vote will be held with the votes of both areas combined. Passage the second time would require a two-thirds majority.

City officials have lauded the annexation as a key for future residential growth to the west.

Less clear than the annexation issue, though, is the ward election measure. Voters last November overwhelmingly approved a similar proposal.

Although that vote scrapped at-large council elections in lieu of ward representation, Wells said the ward boundaries as drawn are unconstitutional.

Rather than face a potential lawsuit at the time of the city's next election in 1994, the council agreed to appoint a citizens committee to redraw the boundaries varying as little from the approved measure as possible and clarify other issues that pertained to ward elections and the city charter.

Wells said it's important to get the "cleaned up" version of the ward election measure before the voters now.

"The period for nomination of council candidates for the 1994 election begins in the fall of this year," he said. "That's why it's important that we get this squared away now in order to be ready for potential candidates to submit nominating petitions in the latter part of November."

Wells said voters should realize that a "no" vote Tuesday won't return the city to at-large elections, but would only force the city to implement the ill-crafted measure approved last fall.

"People need to make sure they understand the effect of their vote," he said. "If anyone thinks that by voting no on this we would go back to an at-large system, that's not correct.

"They need to understand that all we'll be doing if it fails is we'll be thrown back to what everybody concedes is a defective ward system," Wells added. "We'd still have a ward system in place, it'd just be one that no one would be happy with."

The city attorney said the city then would be vulnerable to lawsuits challenging the spring election results.

The principal problem with last fall's ward measure was that population in the six wards as drawn varied by as much as 58 percent. There also were parts of the city charter pertaining to elections that needed to be changed to accommodate ward elections.

Under the new plan that voters will consider Tuesday, the wards have a maximum variation in population of about one-half of a percent.

If approved by voters, the amended charter would provide for election next April of a council member from each of three new districts: Wards 1, 2 and 6. In April 1996, voters would elect council members for Wards 3, 4 and 5.

The number of persons in Ward 1, on the city's northeast side, is 5,780; Ward 2, on the city's south and southeast sides, 5,772; Ward 3, in the central part of the city, 5,777; Ward 4, in northern and northwest Cape Girardeau, 5,772; Ward 5, in the city's north-central and west-central side, 5,778; and Ward 6, in the extreme west side of town, 5,750.

(See the related ward map on Page 13A.)

One council member will be elected from each ward, and the mayor will continue to be elected at large. All will serve four-year terms.