Tag: The News Tribune

A study group has been exploring whether the city should break with its long-established tradition of electing municipal and school board officials on odd-numbered years, instead of having them run in conjunction with federal, state and county candidates on even-numbered years Jeff Anderson, a member of the study group, said they will meet once more next week and then share their recommendations with the charter commission on Wednesday. Any time you can save a few hundred thousand dollars for taxpayers, that's a good thing," Anderson said. In 2015, the Duluth School Board sought to switch its elections to even years, but it was unable to do so because of a state statute that required its ballot to coincide with the city's. But former Duluth mayor Don Ness remains skeptical of moving away from the current off-year municipal election cycle out of concern that local races would be eclipsed by larger-scale campaigns. In the 2017 general election, fewer than 28 percent of registered voters in Duluth showed up at the polls. "I think Duluth benefits greatly from having local elections that people have the time and space to really focus on those races and to consider the candidates," Ness said. "I think we benefit from the additional attention given to city council, school board and mayoral races in the odd years," he said. Hobbs agreed it's highly unlikely that city council or mayoral candidates would be in a financial position to mount campaigns even remotely comparable to those seen at the congressional, presidential or even state levels. "It forces local candidates to work a little harder, which is probably a good thing, but I think there's also a little bit of concern about how you compete with that amount of money," he said. "Does it make down-ballot races more partisan?"