The Buckingham Community Civic Association (BCCA) will hold its next virtual membership meeting via Google Meet on Monday, September 19, 2022, beginning at 7:30 p.m.
You can join the meeting using this link here: https://meet.google.com/ker-deda-sdm

The meeting will feature a presentation and discussion by Dave Schutz of the Arlington County Civic Federation on the Federation’s draft Task Force in Governance and Election Reform (TiGER) resolution. The Federation is seeking input on the draft resolution from its member organizations.

Given our County Board and School Board each have 5 elected members, which number
has not changed since 1930, when the County had 25,000 residents, the County is now far more populous and diverse, and it faces increasing challenges to remain properly responsive to our many communities. Therefore, the draft resolution contains the following recommendations:

1. Expand the County and School Boards membership from 5 to 7 members;

2. Maintain At-Large seats for the election of County and School Board members;

3. Increase the term of the Chairs of the County and School Boards from the current one-year term to a minimum of two years, with the ability to extend the term for up to another two years if fellow Board members concur;

4. Increase the salaries of County Board and School Board members to attract a wider range of candidates:

a. For the County Board – support and continue the implementation of the phased increase of salaries to the statutory pay caps of $89,951 for County Board members and $95,734 for the Chair; 

b. For the School Board – increase their salaries substantially over the current levels of $25,000 for members and $27,000 for the Chair;

5. Replace the current plurality method of electing both boards with multi-seat (also known as proportional) ranked choice voting;

6. Stagger the elections for both boards every two years, with one set of elections to be composed of 4 County Board seats and 3 School Board seats, followed by an election two years later to fill 3 County Board seats and 4 School Board seats, with a continued rotation biennially, maintaining 4-year terms for all County and School Board members.

If you are interested in this topic, or would like to discuss other issues involving our community, join the meeting by clicking on this Google Meet link shortly before 7:30 p.m on September 19th.  No pre-registration is needed.