Council should resist using wrong criteria

Reading the profiles of the seven candidates for the Ward 1 opening on the Blytheville City Council in Sunday’s Courier News provided a sobering glimpse of the tremendous challenge before the council.

On Tuesday, the five sitting members of the council will pick one of those seven to serve the remainder of the term of James Sanders, who resigned his seat after being appointed Mississippi County sheriff. The good news for the council is there are a number of highly qualified candidates for the open seat. The bad news is they can only pick one.

Much has been made the last couple of weeks about the need to pick the “most qualified” candidate, or more specifically, that the selection should not be based on race alone. That is obviously the case. The color of a person’s skin no more makes him or her more or less capable of a task today than it did 100 years ago.

But among criteria council members should resist using when making their pick, race is certainly not alone. Indeed, there are other traits that council members may be tempted to place value on, which they would be better served to largely ignore.

For instance, just because a candidate may be a “lifelong” or “longtime” Blytheville resident, it doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is better qualified to serve on the City Council. There’s nothing wrong with taking pride is such a feat, mind you. But as far as being able to make decisions in the best interests of the ward and the city, people who have lived here for just a handful of years are just as capable as those who have lived here for 30 or 40.

In fact, having lived elsewhere could potentially give a candidate a leg up in the ability to do the job. Having seen how cities function elsewhere could be a benefit for a local leader. After all, there are times when the answers to our questions and the solutions to our problems exist outside the confines of our fair city.

Another factor that the council should resist weighing too heavily when making its decision is the perception of a candidate’s ability to "get along" with other council members. Whether it’s hiring subordinates or making political appointments, there is a natural tendency among us humans to pick people who agree with us. But the candidate who is most “agreeable” may not make the best city council member.

City councils — like other governmental bodies — should be places where divergent opinions are welcome. Show me a city council — or a school board, or a chamber board, or a quorum court — where the vote is always unanimous, and I’ll show you board members more interested in serving each other than their constituency.

We need people on the City Council who have new ideas. We need people who can bring new sets of eyes and new perspectives to our problems. This is the way to keep the city moving forward.

Besides that, efforts in the past by the City Council to bring “like-minded” members into the fold have kind of ended up backfiring.

The decision ahead of our City Council is an awesome responsibility. Any other time there is an opening on the council, hundreds of votes would decide who fills the seat. But this time, it will be a mere five votes that make that determination.

I don’t envy the challenge facing our council members. The decision will be straining, and no doubt whatever they decide will be met with criticism. But I urge them to be diligent, to be thoughtful, and to be courageous.

Picking one-sixth of the City Council is no easy task, nor should it be. Let's hope proper thoughtfulness goes into the decision.