THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 5, 1997 TAG: 9702050466
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 67 lines
The City Council plans to appoint a ``blue-ribbon'' panel to study whether residents should directly elect the city's mayor.
``We get a feeling that's what our people want now,'' Vice Mayor Herbert M. Collins Sr. said Tuesday. ``People want more direct representation, and we think our time has come to consider this.''
Mayor Paul D. Fraim said the council, which has discussed the idea for several months, reached consensus on the issue during a closed session Tuesday.
Fraim said the council intends to explore the matter in a ``deliberate and calculated fashion.''
If a change is made, Fraim said, it probably would not occur until after the 2000 census, when city wards would be redrawn to reflect population shifts.
``Nobody wants to be rushed into this,'' Fraim said. ``It needs a complete airing.''
Fraim said the council will select about 15 citizens to serve on the panel, which could begin meeting by mid-April. The committee could meet for as long as a year, and would hold public hearings to allow citizens a chance to voice ideas or concerns.
Council members said their decision to study an at-large elected mayor stems largely from a trend among other cities in the region and the nation. Portsmouth has elected its mayor since at least the 1970s, while Virginia Beach and Chesapeake began doing so in 1988.
Currently, Norfolk and Suffolk are the only Hampton Roads cities in which council members continue to choose a mayor from among their own ranks, and the Suffolk city council last year began taking steps to change to an elected mayor.
``Really and truly, it's something whose time has come,'' Norfolk Councilman W. Randy Wright said.
Added Norfolk councilman and former mayor Mason C. Andrews: ``Every other city in this region has it. There must be some reason.''
Some council members said privately that the city's 5-year-old ward system, in which each member is elected from a specific district by only a portion of the city's residents, poses a tough balancing act for a mayor trying to serve his or her ward as well as the interests of the entire city. It also has created tension among council members representing various points of view from other wards.
Fraim, for example, is mayor but was elected to council by voters in his ward, which contains the Ghent and Larchmont sections and has roughly 20 percent of the city's population.
``It has the potential of diverting energies of the council determining who's going to be mayor,'' Andrews said.
Changing to an elected mayor would require approval of the U.S. Justice Department, which oversees Norfolk's voting districts under the federal voting rights act. The Virginia General Assembly also would have to pass legislation to change the city's charter.
The ward system was created after the NAACP and seven residents successfully sued to overturn at-large election of council members in 1983 . The ward structure could complicate efforts to create an at-large system of electing a mayor.
In 1990, when the city was immersed in staking out the wards, the council rejected changing to an elected mayor. Joseph A. Leafe, who was mayor at the time, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that the issue warrants further study.
``The way the system has changed with the advent of the ward system,'' Leafe said, ``there's real merit of having somebody as mayor that the total city votes for.''
KEYWORDS: ELECTED MAYOR NORFOLK CITY COUNCIL