Instant runoff voting would save city money

Three suggestions for the Cedar Rapids Charter Review Commission:

I believe that we should have a special charter for city government until we have the flood protection built. The scope and scale of the money, decisions and urgencies for all the flood recovery projects deserve an investment of more time than a part-time council.

I suggest that a winning a seat on the council should mean winning a budget of between $45,000 and $75,000. The councilperson could pay herself or himself or use some of this budget for a personal staff person.

Listening to a meeting of the Linn County Supervisors is an example of the quality of discussion that one gets from full-time elected leaders.

The charter review that is currently under way was scheduled after five years of experience, but the next charter review is not scheduled for 10 more years. I think another review of the city charter in five years would be worth the time.

Under the current charter, when a candidate for council does not win a majority of votes, there is a runoff election a month later. The expense for this non-partisan runoff election can be saved by using the new vote counting technology of instant runoff voting. Voters are given ballots on which they can rank candidates.

These rankings tell the election administrators which candidate a voter would vote for in a runoff election so that a second runoff election is not needed to discover which candidate is preferred by the majority.

Clark Rieke

Cedar Rapids