E-Mail This Article to a Friend CITY COUNCIL Four more years? BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

The last person who floated the idea of four-year terms for Boston city councilors was Albert L. "Dapper" O’Neil, who proposed it shortly before losing his at-large seat on that body in the November 1999 election. His motivation was transparent: he was about to lose an election with very low turnout — arguably so low as to make the vote unrepresentative of the city as a whole.

District Six councilor John Tobin is trying to resurrect Dapper’s plan without as strong a whiff of self-interest. He has submitted a home-rule petition on the subject that wouldn’t take effect until 2009, when the next mayoral election after this year’s takes place. And, Tobin is emphasizing the potential cost savings to Bostonians of not holding so-called off-year elections. The council will hold hearings on the petition in April; if it moves forward from there, it likely will be as a non-binding referendum on this November’s ballot.

Boston holds city elections in odd-numbered years, which, in the absence of national and statewide contests, almost guarantees low turnout. Every four years there is a mayor’s race to draw interest, such as in 1993, when 50 percent of registered Bostonians came out to choose Ray Flynn’s replacement. That’s not quite the 69 percent that voted last year in the John Kerry presidential crusade, but it’s double the 25 percent turnout in 1999 and 2003.

That’s 25 percent of registered voters; the turnout was closer to 12 percent of eligible voters in those years. If City Council elections took place every four years, along with the mayor’s, Tobin argues, you wouldn’t have such a tiny portion of the populace picking the city’s leaders — and you would save money by cutting the off-year elections. "To spend close to a million dollars for an 11 percent turnout seems like a waste of money," he says.

The million-dollar figure is Tobin’s current estimate of the cost of holding the off-year election. Staff at the Boston Election Department suggest this figure is several times too high, but that will be hashed out at the hearings.

Tobin suggests other benefits that might result from a four-year term: more non-campaigning time for councilors to focus on getting things accomplished; better candidates running for the job; and greater interest in the council elections.

Maybe. Or maybe the reason most people don’t vote in off-year elections is that they couldn’t care less about the councilors, or the council itself, in this strong-mayor city government. Those who do care surely appreciate the way the two-year term forces their councilors to constantly prostrate themselves at their doorsteps, school auditoriums, and churches.

We’ll see what people think, if the idea makes it to the ballot. Of course, those deciding would be the few coming out to vote in this odd-year election.