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Edgerton mayor proposes changes to city government

EDGERTON — Suggested headline: Edgerton mayor proposes changes to city government

By Stacy Vogel

svogel@gazettextra.com

EDGERTON

The city of Edgerton wants to know what its residents think about the local government setup.

The city council voted June 16 to send out surveys about the three proposals from Mayor Erik Thompson in the city’s quarterly newsletter. It will be sent with the utility bills July 1.

Thompson proposes to:

- Change the city council from aldermanic seats to at-large seats. Currently, the city has three aldermanic districts with two council members each. The proposal is to elect all council members at-large, meaning voters anywhere in the city could vote for any candidate.

Thompson believes the change might encourage more people to run for city council. He thinks some people might be intimidated from running if they live in a district with a long-time incumbent, he said.

- Change the mayoral term from two years to four years.

“Your first two years, there’s a tremendous learning curve, and if you do it right, it takes at least two years to learn that,” Thompson said. “I think a mayor should have at least two more years to make a change.”

Thompson said he’s not committed to the proposal, but he’d like to see what residents think.

- Limiting mayors to 10 years in office.

Thompson wants to limit the time a mayor can serve because he believes it’s important to bring new faces and ideas to the office, he said.

In 2006, Thompson defeated 10-year incumbent Matt McIntyre in the mayoral race, but his proposal has nothing to do with McIntyre, he said.

“Some people could just see it as, ‘Oh, he’s just doing it because him and Matt don’t get along,’ and that isn’t the reason,” Thompson said. “It’s nothing personal to any one person.”

Most cities in Wisconsin have aldermanic districts, said Dan Thompson, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities. He is not related to the Edgerton mayor.

Conventional wisdom says aldermanic districts make representatives more responsible to neighborhoods, distribute representation throughout the city and make it easier to campaign because alderpersons only have to win voters in a certain area, he said.

But he said he doesn’t see much real difference between the two systems.

“I’ve got lots of members that operate both, with aldermanic systems and at-large systems, and I can’t honestly say I see great big differences in the outcome,” he said.

Whitewater follows the “Missouri Plan,” choosing one representative from each of the city’s five aldermanic districts and two representatives from the city at large, Dan Thompson said.

“The argument is you get the best of both worlds,” he said.