Scenarios for Implementing Reduction of Council Size

Background

The City Council has an odd number of members to minimize the number of tie votes (this is a routine arrangement).
Seats on the Council have a term of 4 years.
Half the seats on Council are up for election every two years. They occur in odd-numbered years.
For the nine-member Council, a "cohort" of five seats will be elected in 2005 and a "cohort" of four seats will be elected in 2007.

Basic Scenarios

There are three basic scenarios, depending on whether Council size reduction should be implemented as part of the 2005, 2007 or 2009 elections.

2005 Election (immediate/fast-track): Two of the five seats up for election would be eliminated. Two of the incumbents will not be running: one (Ojakian) is term-limited out and one (Burch) has announced he will not run. Hence, immediate reduction would not force any incumbent out of a seat.
Campaign: This could have a very disruptive effect on the election campaign because candidates would not know whether there were three or five seats available until after the election. For a potential candidate, there is a huge difference between running in an election for five seats, with at least two of them open (open = the incumbent is not running), and an election with just three seats with at most one open seat (the incumbents haven't yet formally announced whether they are running). Some candidates may choose not to run, and others may run a radically different campaign.
Legality: The precise mechanism for implementing this reduction has not been determined, but it would eliminate the seats for the fourth- and fifth-place finishers.
Cohorts: 2005 reduced from five to three; 2007 remains at four.
2007 Election: One of the five seats up for election in 2005 would be immediately converted into a 2-year seat which would disappear at the end of 2007. One of the seats whose term expires in 2007 would be eliminated.
Campaigning: Much less disruptive. The fifth place finisher in the 2005 election would get a seat on Council and would be able to run for a full-term seat in the 2007 election. Three of the four incumbents in the 2007 election are termed-out.
Legality: Again, the precise legalities for changing the fifth-place finisher's seat from 4 years to 2 years has not been determined.
Cohorts: 2005 reduced from five to four; 2007 reduced from four to three.
2009 Election: Two of the five seats would be eliminated.
Campaigning: Potential of having more than three incumbents vying for the three remaining seats.
Legalities: no difficulties known.
Cohorts: 2005 reduced from five to three (in 2009); 2007 remains unchanged.

Interaction with directly elected mayor

There is a parallel proposal to convert one of the Council seats into a directly elected mayor. The current thought is to have this, if passed, take effect in 2007 election. This interacts with the proposal to reduce Council size because you want to keep the two "cohorts" of roughly the same size regardless of whether one or both passes.

If the proposal for a directly elected Mayor passes and the one for Council reduction fails, one of the Council seats in the 2005 election would be converted from a four-year term to a two-year term. You do not want to convert one of the 2007 seats because that would leave a cohort of three in 2007 versus one of five in 2005/2009.

If both measures pass, there would be three seats remaining in both cohorts. Changes to above scenarios for implementing Council size reduction:

2005 Election (fast-track): no change. The seat converted to Mayor would be one of the seats up for election in 2007.
2007 Election: A second seat in the 2005 election would be reduced from a four-year term to a two-year term. This seat would convert to the Mayor's seat.
2005 Election: no change. The seat converted to Mayor would be one of the seats up for election in 2007.