If slashing 44 Councillors to 22 is a good idea how about 11?

[spider]

You only get what you pay for, right? We pay some traffic cops and TTC ticket booth attendants way more than we pay 44 people to run our city. Top municipal civil servants are being paid 2 and 3 times what we pay their bosses, something is wrong with this picture.

Instead of 44 people with often rather ordinary skillsets being paid more than they could command in the real world let's go after some real talent by paying more than we pay a bus driver, no offence meant to bus drivers.

Let's reduce the number of members from 44 to 11.

Councillors would each be paid $300,000 per year but would be required to pay all their expenses from this amount. No junkets, meals, mileage, parking or anything else could be expensed.

Council meetings would be scheduled for 2 days per week, not 2 days per month where attendance appears to be optional. Quorum would be set at 9. Imagine a meeting where only 11 opinions instead of 44 would have to be heard.

Discuss.

 

[Paleo]

Chop one digit off of 11 and you'll have my vote. Cut out all of the middle men. It's much more efficient that way.

 

[Fresh Start]

There are currently 44 councillors covering an area that is served by 22 federal MPs and 22 provincial MPPs.

$9 million in direct salary and office savings and at least $6 million in staff time could be achieved via downsizing according to one estimate. Does Toronto really need one councillor per 56,818 people that's unlikely to be a visible, involved presence in their local ward anyway?

 

[Parkdalian]

With Toronto's operating budget at $9 billion, we are talking about reducing representation to save 0.1% of the budget?

I can understand shrinking council for other reasons, but clearly saving money shouldn't be the driving factor here.

 

[spider]

With Toronto's operating budget at $9 billion, we are talking about reducing representation to save 0.1% of the budget?

I can understand shrinking council for other reasons, but clearly saving money shouldn't be the driving factor here.

I am sorry, I didn't make myself more clear. My proposition to reduce the number of councillors from 44 to 11 is not about saving money it is about reducing redundancy and attracting a better class of candidates.

 

[MetroMan]

Councillors would each be paid $300,000 per year but would be required to pay all their expenses from this amount. No junkets, meals, mileage, parking or anything else could be expensed.

I agree with reducing the number of councillors and increasing their salary to attract bigger talent but I disagree with making their office expenses deductible from their salary. This will discourage spending on important initiatives. They might cut out fluff expenses, but they'll also cut out essential ones because it's coming out of their own pocket. There are better ways to curb spending on fluff, this is not one of them.

 

[nfitz]

I'm not sure why we'd want to cut to 22 councillors. That would double the work load of the existing councillors, requiring them to service 100,000 residents instead of 50,000. The bigger the area they cover, the less they will deal with local issues well.

Assuming that each councillor has 2 staff, I can think of many other city departments where the loss of 66 people would make less difference.

 

[jn_12]

Few places in the world ask for less representation and less democracy. It's baffling. Considering municipal councilors need to be much closer to their constituents and what is going on in their ward than any MP or MPP, it's no wonder we have twice as many Councilors. It only makes sense, especially in the downtown where there is so much development and whatnot going on that there are meetings for various things pretty much daily. Suggesting that one councilor can do the job of 2 or 4 suggests to me that many of you have no clue how government works and what councilors actually do. You probably think they just show up at council to vote every so often and then retire to their cushy homes paid for by your tax dollars. It's sad.

 

[GraphicMatt]

I don't believe that cutting councillors is necessary or desirable, but I do think the post-amalgamation council structure is lacking. Maybe instead of having all 44 councillors meet and vote on issues, they could instead put more emphasis on local sub-councils with each borough electing one council representative to meet with the mayor and discuss and vote on city-wide issues.

 

[kettal]

i think the wards should match federal ridings BUT have two councilors elected by each ward (the two highest vote getters)

 

[urbandreamer]

Why don't we just have a mayor and a deputy mayor. Zero councilors. They're never accountable anyhow. Decisions will be made much quicker.

 

[Chuck]

It's really not terrible for Toronto to have 44 councilors representing 2.5 million people. It's worse in smaller municipalities such as Newmarket, where there are 7 councilors representing at most 75,000 people.

The best thing that Toronto can do is to stop permitting the role of city councilor to be a part time time job. Absenteeism at concil meetings should be dealt with severely, weekly meetings with constituents should be mandatory, and for those councilors wishing to sit on various boards, university education in that field should be a must.

 

[junctionist]

Gutting the council of democratic representation just to save a tiny fraction in the city's budget is bizarre. You might as well suggest we just contract out decision making. (Maybe if we got some central European firm, we'd have cleaner streets/parks and better urban design .)

 

[adma]

Chop one digit off of 11 and you'll have my vote. Cut out all of the middle men. It's much more efficient that way.

You said it, kiddo

 

[Jonny5]

weekly meetings with constituents should be mandatory

I'm not sure if Councilors or voters have the maturity to handle this.