To complete the projected change would assure that every district was represented by a district council person; a person that would be mandated by law to represent his or her own district voters with no obligations to anyone else. To complete the projected change would also assure the council member that they would only be required to campaign in their own district. When voters go to the poles to vote only the names of the candidates running to represent their district would appear on their ballots.
This would assure less cost to run for a district council position and a lot less walking prior to Election Day.
Our four current districts are simply a square in each corner of the Bicknell map and each district contains part of two precincts.

The 1st district is in the bottom right hand corner;

the 2nd district is in the bottom left hand corner;

the 3rd district is the top left hand corner:

the 4th district is in the top right hand corner.
All four districts appear to meet at about West and East 4th Street and Main Street.
John R. Stanczak

(Reply)
Re: Proposed Bicknell District Thursday, February 03
Well, since I live is the "proposed" district 4, I guess I have more of a say in what goes on it the city than say someone who lives in district 1.
As district 1 would be the largest and district 4 is the smallest. The ONLY way to make this work and be fair is to split District one up and make it almost equal to district 4 making 5 districts instead of 4. But then you would have the problem of having six people on the council, what would happen if sometime the vote on something was 3 to 3? But this is my humble opinion.

M. Brough
(Answer)
This is a good question or point and I will try to explain or answer it.

You would not have any more say in the operation of the city because all councilpersons would only have one (1) vote at council meetings regardless of the size of the district.

You would be able to argue that you would have more access to your councilperson than a larger district but Bicknell does not have big enough districts to make that so; besides it is unlikely that any council member would be too busy to see any voter within the month between meetings; in Bicknell districts the councilperson could probably see every voter in their district within the month if the need arose.

To split a district and retain individual district representation would require the changing of precincts and that would be costly.

I have spoken to Brenda Hall and was told that many of Vincennes? Districts are of different sizes and this does not affect city affairs and it is legal.

The purpose of the change is to give the voters of each district a council person that is not influenced by the voters of any other district and is therefore mandated but law to represent only their own district.

Should your councilperson not respond as the voters wish they would have the option of voting on Election Day and replacing their councilperson with someone that they feel is a better choice; you do not have that option today.

Today the other three districts would out vote you because the three districts will always out vote the one district just as they have been doing for the last 15 or 20 years, maybe even longer.

John R. Stanczak
(Reply)
I think some of the confusion on this is the fact that people don’t know which district they are in now which is different from the precincts. As a matter of fact I didn’t know the current acting districts were different from the precincts until the Bicknell Volunteers meeting this week.
Ron Ackman