Letter: Don't discard at-large districts

The citizens of St Mary Parish will shortly be asked to vote on changes to the Parish Charter. Those changes are being proposed by the Parish Council, many of whom are too young to remember the conditions under which the current Parish Charter was written.
Forty-plus years ago, St. Mary Parish had a problem that was hard to miss and harder to solve: an East-West divide so stubborn it could have qualified as a natural landmark. Neighboring parishes moved ahead while we spent more energy arguing across the imaginary line than building anything useful on either side of it.
I was a young man on the Police Jury when I first proposed a home-rule charter, and our side lost the vote.
After I left the Police Jury, we circulated petitions calling for a new charter, the Police Jury then had no choice but to appoint a Charter Commission. The Commission wrote the charter, and the people eventually adopted it in an election.
When the Home Rule Charter was written, two of its deliberate remedies were term limits and three at-large council members. Those at-large seats required candidates to face the entire parish, not just their own corner of it. Most of the old Police Jury members didn’t care much for either idea. The citizens passed them anyway.
Those three parishwide seats have worked ever since. While eight members properly represent their districts, the three at-large members answer to everybody. That simple arrangement is a big reason the old East-West bitterness has faded into local folklore instead of remaining a daily political sport.
Removing the incentive to be at-large members invites the old split to reappear. Running parish-wide is more difficult than running in a single district; that difficulty is exactly why the Charter wisely required the Council Chairman to come from the at-large ranks.
A chairman whose political base is one district will, human nature being what it is, tend to see the parish through that district’s windshield. Experience suggests that would not end well for the whole parish.
The proposed change will not make St. Mary Parish more prosperous. That change risks splitting our parish again. I urge my fellow citizens to vote against eliminating any changes to the at-large seats. We cannot afford to take a step backwards in St Mary Parish.
Politicians, it turns out, remain remarkably consistent creatures. Sometimes they need a gentle public reminder to do the right thing.
Greg Hamer Sr.
Morgan City