San Marcos Charter Review Commission considers adopting single-member districts

Sierra Martin | Managing Editor

SAN MARCOS – The San Marcos Charter Review Commission is considering that city council moves to adopt single-member districts, which would assign specific portions of the city to be represented by just one council member, instead of all seven.

Currently, all seven San Marcos City Council members are considered to be “at-large,” and all citizens can vote for their positions on city council. By adopting a single-member district, residents would only vote for one city council member, depending on where they live in the city.

The San Marcos Consolidated School District, Hays County Commissioners, Buda City Council and other surrounding cities have already moved to single-member districts.

According to Fair Vote, the single-member election is the most common and best-known electoral system currently in use in America. Under single-member plurality systems, an area is divided into a number of geographically defined voting districts, each represented by a single elected official. Voters can only vote for their district’s representative, with the highest vote-getter winning election, even if he or she has received less than half of the vote.

Zachariah Sambrano thinks that single-member districts offer better representation and made a motion for the council to explore single-member district forms of government other than all at-large places.

“When I ran (for Charter Review) a lot of people that I encountered and talked to either didn’t know any city council members or didn’t feel like they had a direct representative on council,” said Sambrano.

The Charter Review Commissioners that supported the motion discussed how neighborhoods in San Marcos may have better representation by knowing which council member to contact that advocated for their portion of the city.

Paul Mayhew said that he sees it differently and that single-member districts do not encourage voting. Additionally, he feels it is problematic because some people or demographics may not be represented. There are seven people who should be getting phone calls and emails instead of just one.

“I think that right now, I am represented by seven different people up there,” said Mayhew. “There are seven people I can go to; it’s not just one person who is responsible for one part of the city… I would make the argument that it would be far better to have seven people that are accountable to you than just one.”

Esther Garcia said that she disagrees with everything Paul Mayhew said and that it is more effective to have a single-member district.

“It makes it look like San Marcos does not believe in equal representation,” said Garcia. “Single-member districts are fair, and it’s happening around Austin, around our cities and we need to look to go in that direction.”

The Charter Commission will consider single-member districts for some, not all city council member seats at their next meeting on May 10.