FARGO (KFGO/KVRR) – Fargo city government is one step closer to possibly going from an at-large commission to a council of wards now that petition signatures have been approved by the city auditor.
The city will now have to set up a special election for voters to approve or disapprove of the system change.
In early June, former City Commissioner Arlette Preston, and members of the group Fargo Wards for Equal Representation, handed in the nearly five thousand signatures to the city auditor’s office.
Preston says she supports the ward system and sees it as a way for people to get more representation from the city government.
“It would make it possible for a candidate to actually do door-to-door. So people would get to know who their representative was, and the representative would get to know what the concerns of the neighborhoods are,” Preston said. “So it would make it more possible for someone to actually run and win without a lot of money.”
Preston says the ballot language will require an independent boundary setting committee to be formed by the commission to set the boundaries of the different wards in order to make sure people in the wards are equally represented.
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