Voters in tiny Chapman Borough to decide whether to shrink size of council
Voters in tiny Chapman Borough to decide whether to shrink size of council
Referendum question on Tuesday’s ballot
Chapman Borough voters have a special question to consider on Election Day in addition to the presidential and other contests on the ballot: Should the borough reduce its council from seven to three members?
The referendum was approved by borough council last year, and the Northampton County Election Board accepted the referendum for the ballot in August.
The proposal to reduce the number of council members comes at a time when the small borough – 223 residents living in a 0.3 square-mile area inside the southeast corner of Moore Township – finds fewer residents willing to serve in borough government. While council has had its full complement of seven members in recent years, borough officials are concerned about filling all seven council seats in the future.
“The past few years have been the hardest as far as getting people to serve on council,” said Mayor Dana Ackerman, a council member for 20 years before becoming mayor about seven years ago.
“That's one of the reasons why council has been discussing going down to three people,” he said Thursday, sitting in council’s small meeting room in borough hall, which, he points out, has three jail cells in the back that are no longer used for their original purpose.
Council will soon be down to five members, with Councilwoman Dorothy Niklos passing away last year and another member soon moving out of the borough, said Ackerman, who is 69 and has lived most of his life in the borough.
Chapman, incorporated in 1865, is the smallest borough in the Lehigh Valley; it’s also the 105th smallest borough out of 964 in Pennsylvania, according to data collected by the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs. (Centralia, the borough in Columbia County ravaged for years by an underground coal fire, is the smallest, with only five residents after most of the thousand people who lived there in 1980 left; 23 boroughs have populations under 100.)
Chapman is not alone in attempting to reduce the size of its council, although the borough association doesn’t keep numbers.
“Anecdotally, we have heard of other boroughs using this mechanism of reducing the size of council due to the lack of people willing to serve,” Ron Grutza, the association’s senior director of government affairs, wrote in an email response to questions.
Two years ago, voters in Yardley, Bucks County, considered whether to reduce its council from seven to five members, a proposal initiated by a Republican committeeman. Voters, however, rejected the plan, according to WHYY.
If Chapman voters approve the referendum, council would not be reduced to three members in 2025. The reduction would occur over the next two council elections, starting next year, as members’ terms expire. For example, two seats would be open in one election and one in the next to get down to three members. Municipal elections are held in odd-numbered years.
Being the small town that is, Chapman council candidates eschew the formal process of collecting signatures on nominating petitions, which are filed with the county election office to get on the ballot. Instead, candidates, even incumbents, typically skip that step and run write-in campaigns.
But people do vote. For the presidential election four years ago, 83% of voters (119 out of 144) cast ballots. For this year, another presidential election, 148 residents are registered to vote.
Ackerman, for one, is looking forward to seeing the referendum’s results.
“I'm anxious to see on Tuesday how this is going to go myself,” he said. “Yeah. I really am.”
To see more Chapman photos from Donna Fisher, click here.
Referendum question
Chapman Borough Council Members
Shall the electorate of Chapman Borough approve a change to the number of members on the Council for the Borough of Chapman to be reduced from seven (7) to three (3) members?
PLAIN ENGLISH VERSION: The ballot question asks the voters of the Borough of Chapman to reduce the number of members of Council from seven members to three members. A vote of ‘YES’ on the ballot question would reduce the members of Council from seven members to three members. A vote of ‘NO’ would maintain the current number of members of Council at seven members.
Source: Northampton County ballot