• by Louie Neira

In La Voz’s ongoing articles concerning the single member district proposal to be voted on in the coming election, the newspaper spoke to Uvalde Mayor Cody Smith to review his assessment and evaluation on the matter.

Mayor Smith agrees with the concept of single-member districts, but suggests a few modifications would be to everyone’s advantage.

“On the proposal that Mr. [Mario] Cruz prepared, I would have preferred, personally, to see it broken down similar to the school district where you have an east zone, west zone, then at large,” says Smith. “We need to have an odd amount [of councilmen] on the city council as far as votes are concerned. We either need to add a new council place, or we need to take it back to where the mayor doesn’t vote.”

When asked if views on this possible abstention, Mayor Smith said, “We need to add a space or amend the charter, whatever we need to do to avoid a three-three set-up. I’m not sure if either would require a referendum, to change the charter – I think it would – but I wouldn’t have a problem either way, especially if we go to a single member district format, it would be best to add another member to the council.”

Given the current area representational profile on the city council, many citizens feel it would be best to add another seat to include additional representation.

“In the event we did go to single member districts or some type of single member district format, I think it would be preferable to add a council member,” says Mayor Smith. “If we added a council member, I guess it would be in quadrants; Main and Getty would be the easiest (boundaries] – not that it would be the best, but it would be the easiest as possible; North, South, East and West, so you could have four single member districts and then two at large, and the mayor at large, obviously, in the event you added a council member.”

The Mayor’s only real concern is the possibility of council members struggling to obtain funds for their district when monetary allocations are necessary throughout the city for repairs and maintenance.

“[A council member] would need the ability to compromise with other council members and their districts,” says Mayor Smith.

However, he does state that he feels the city, as a whole, is progressing and improvements, although slow at first, will be strong and steady in the coming months.