I am reconsidering my long-standing opposition to single-member districts to determine who represents Amarillo municipal government.

I’ve long held that the Amarillo City Council was served best by having all its members elected at-large. Each of its five members — including the mayor — represents the entire city. They’re all elected from the same citywide voter pool. Call one or all of them if you have a problem. Someone will tend to your concern.

Well, on Saturday I crossed paths with someone who’s been involved for years in the single-member-district campaign in Amarillo. Janie Rivas formerly served on the Amarillo school board. Her husband, J.E. Sauseda, is a lawyer who’s been at the forefront of the effort to change the city’s voting plan.

Janie and I visited for a few minutes, got reacquainted and ventured a notion to her about this whole idea of electing folks from single-member districts. Why not, I reckoned, split the difference? Sauseda and others keep arguing for a governing council with all members elected from districts. Elect the mayor at-large, of course, but expand the council by two seats and divide the city into six districts.

My idea is to expand the council to six council members, with two of them elected at-large and four elected from single-member districts. Many cities in Texas elect their councils from those kinds of voting plans. Beaumont, where I lived for nearly 11 years before moving to Amarillo, is one of them. The system works well.

Amarillo’s population is about to surpass 200,000 residents. Its demographic profile is changing dramatically, with significant increases in Latino residents. The city still has many neighborhoods with disparate socio-economic levels. Plus, there exists this nagging perception among residents that the city pays too much attention to high-end neighborhoods’ needs at the expense of those who live across town.

Another option might be to adopt a cumulative voting plan approved years ago by the Amarillo Independent School District. AISD started that plan to settle a lawsuit that had been filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens protesting AISD’s at-large voting plan. If AISD has three seats being contested, you can cast all three votes for a single candidate. That system has worked well for AISD.

I’m thinking that the time has arrived for Amarillo City Hall to revisit the idea of how we elect our city council members.

Think also of this: Electing council members from single-member districts gives the mayor more actual standing than he currently has in Amarillo, given that he would perhaps be the only council member elected at-large. Or … the mayor would be one of, say, three individuals elected at-large, while the other four come from these districts.

Amarillo is growing up right before our eyes. Is it time for the city to keep pace with that growth by reforming its electoral system? I believe it is.