By MIKIO KANO/ Staff Writer
November 3, 2024 at 18:07 JST
Residents of Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, can rate Mayor Tatsuo Igarashi’s performance on the city’s smartphone app. (Mikio Kano)
TSUKUBA, Ibaraki Prefecture--Residents here are voting online to determine the retirement allowance for the city mayor, who asked the public to decide how much they think he deserves.
Around 130,000 people aged 15 or older are being asked to evaluate Tatsuo Igarashi’s performance during his second term by Nov. 11. Voting is being done through the city’s smartphone app.
What makes the experiment so interesting is that the 46-year-old mayor could end up with as little as 22 yen or as much as 20,394,000 yen ($134,000), or somewhere in between. It depends on the average score he receives.
The app asks residents to rate the city’s administration during Igarashi’s second term, which ends this month, on a 0-to-100 scale in increments of 10 points.
As a reference for voting, the city government published a “road map” showing progress on 135 issues the mayor promised during his campaign four years ago.
The document said policies have been “steadily implemented” on 86.1 percent of those issues, which range from welfare, child rearing, community development and infrastructure building.
Online voting started on Nov. 1 after Igarashi won his third term in a mayoral election on Oct. 27.
Residents who have the My Number identification card equipped with a valid electronic certificate are eligible to participate.
Those without a smartphone can vote at the city office on weekdays if they have the My Number card. Votes are also accepted at branch offices on some days.
Igarashi has said he designed the system to fairly reflect the evaluations of residents based on a debate on his first retirement allowance four years ago.
When he ran for mayor for the first time, Igarashi promised not to accept a retirement allowance.
He eventually cut the amount from 20,394,000 yen to 22 yen. Under the law, a retirement allowance cannot be reduced to zero.
While some people welcomed the decision, others said accepting a standard retirement allowance was a better way to help secure a qualified successor.
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