ZONE GROUP STUDIES OPTIONS

Cape Girardeau is another step closer to sorting out the conundrum posed by the city ward representation measure voters approved in November.

The newly-formed Zone Election Committee comprised of 22 citizens interested in resolving legal and technical questions surrounding the charter amendment initiative held its first meeting Thursday at City Hall.

All but two of the committee members attended the meeting, where there seemed to be basic agreement on the scope of the issues before the group.

Former Mayor Howard Tooke, who was named chairman of the committee, told members to keep that scope narrow.

"The only recommendations we can make will be to clarify the intent of the measure, not to add to or delete from it in any way," Tooke said. "Probably the most work of this committee will be to determine zone boundaries and to determine how those boundaries can be redrawn to accommodate population shifts."

At the meeting, City Attorney Warren Wells presented several handouts to the committee members defining the facets of the zone election measure which was placed on the ballot in the form of an amendment to the city charter that needs to be corrected.

By a 8,601-4,475 margin, voters approved the measure that replaced at large council representation with a ward representation system. It divides the city into six "zones" with a council member elected from each.

Wells said that the most recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the boundaries of such zones require that they be as nearly equal in population as possible so that each council member represents about the same number of people.

But population in the zones drawn in the measure vary by as much as 58 percent, "a variance which is clearly unacceptable under law," Wells said.

Because the new boundaries were written into the charter per the charter amendment approved by the voters, the council must resubmit any initial zone boundary changes to the voters, Wells said.

The committee recommended the city hire the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission in Perryville to compile census data for the city wards for use in redrawing the zone boundaries.

Aside from redrawing the boundaries to create population equality among the six zones, the city attorney identified two other "problem areas" in the zone amendment measure.

Although proponents of the zone election issue have urged the city to move quickly to implement the measure, the city charter prohibits its implementation until 1994 the next scheduled regular election.

An additional concern is that because the current council members serve staggered, four-year terms and state law prohibits council members' terms from being ended prematurely by the adoption of the ward system, at least three of the current council members must remain in office until 1996.

Committee member John Oliver Jr., a Cape Girardeau attorney, said the easiest solution for the issue would be to redraw the zone boundaries to assure that those council members reside in different wards. After the 1994 election, they then would become representatives of the wards where they live.

"I think you can make the legal argument that this not go into effect until 1996, and there are cases in other states that hold to that," Oliver said. "But that's clearly not what we want to do.

"We know there's a way to put it into effect in 1994 by gerrymandering the boundaries to split up a couple council members and letting them serve out their terms as representatives of those wards."

The only other way to implement the ward system would be through a "fresh start" with an entirely new council should the current council be persuaded to resign once the boundaries are redrawn, Oliver added.

Wells said he hoped to change "as little as possible" of the amendment to assure that when it's resubmitted to the voters they would see it as a good faith effort to clean up the charter amendment without thwarting the voters' choice in November.

"If it is put on the ballot and it fails, we're right in the situation we're in today," he said. "I don't think there's any question we're in an indefensible position as far as the way the boundaries are drawn if we were challenged."

Another local attorney who's serving on the committee, Kevin Spaeth, said the city's in "a tough situation," because it could face a lawsuit if the amendment isn't implemented, but if it is and is found illegal, the city also could be subject to a lawsuit.

"You've got loaded guns at both sides of your head," Spaeth added.