GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (via WOOD TV) — The Grand Rapids City Commission could undergo a major change if a community-driven proposal makes it onto the ballot.
A citizen group is looking to change the number of wards on the commission from three to eight, which would completely redraw the electoral map. The question is whether the current three-ward system leaves many people without an adequate voice and whether the city commission and voters agree that change is needed.
The current three-ward system has been in place for more than 100 years. City historians say a massive strike of furniture workers in 1911 prompted the furniture lobby to get the city charter changed. Grand Rapids, then a city of 112,000, went from 12 wards to three.
The plan has endured even as the city has nearly doubled in population.
“It doesn’t provide residents who potentially could be great leaders in this city the opportunity to be lifted to those levels,” Don Lee of the GR Democracy Initiative said.
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