While litigating and agitating for replacing the at-large council election system with a district-based system, litigators and agitators liked to point to the fact that four of the five councilmembers live in Anaheim Hills as evidence of how “unrepresentative” the current system is.
It is an intrinsically weak argument, in part because it is anomalous to have 4/5 of the council residing in Anaheim Hills.
And now the outcome of the November elections have rendered it even weaker, since the two winners, Jordan Brandman and Lucille Kring, both live in the flatlands. Together with incumbent Councilwoman Gail Eastman, two-thirds of the new council will be flatlanders.
This should illustrate that the geographic distribution of councilmembers will naturally fluctuate from election to election and permanently restructuring how the city council is elected because of a passing anomaly is ill-considered and hasty public policy.
