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

How exactly would the mayor/council go about slashing the number of councillors anyway?
Does the mayor have the power to do this? City-wide referendum via putting it on the ballot?
If it's put to a vote in council I would really struggle to see just how many councillors support a motion that will essentially put them out of a job.
 
Jonny5 said:
I'm not sure if Councillors or voters have the maturity to handle this.
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My councillor seems to meet with constituents somewhere of another in the ward weekly, or more, on some issue or another. Full-scale meetings on any issue are less common, but they do happen. Surely all councillors do this?
 
Parkdalian said:
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.
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Every little bit adds up. If Toronto could find a way to trim 10% off it's budget, that's close to one billion dollars in savings.

That's not the true motive for threatening to slash Council though. Say you were a Councillor and suddenly your job came under jeopardy, wouldn't put in that extra effort to fulfil the duties of your position as such to remain valuable and not expendible to your employer - in this case the constituents of your Ward? Lighting a fire under some of the dead weight is all the taxpayer is asking for here. Admit past mistakes, acknowledge that there's issues to be corrected in every Ward and make it your personal mandate to resolve citizens' concerns. Don't patronize people who are asking legitimate questions. Oh and don't go back to being an inert or absentee Councillor once reelected.
 
jn_12 said:
Few places in the world ask for less representation and less democracy. It's baffling.
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I think you should tell that to the councillors...Too many don't show up to the meetings!

The top two vote getters sound like a great idea (with of course a Minimum percentage of the votes!)
 
I do find it incredibly hypocritical that the individuals lambasting city council for being "out of touch" with constituents' concerns are the same ones calling for fewer councillors. Are the Fordists really that concerned about the number of councillors, or is simply that the current 44 member council is largely unsympathetic to their views?
 
mjl08 said:
I do find it incredibly hypocritical that the individuals lambasting city council for being "out of touch" with constituents' concerns are the same ones calling for fewer councillors. Are the Fordists really that concerned about the number of councillors, or is simply that the current 44 member council is largely unsympathetic to their views?
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Um, like I said in the other thread, Right of Council is pretty deadlock even with Left of Council, Ms. Fletcher aside. That's not the point though. The point is demanding better a work ethic from the Councillors NOW, such that the need to actually 'fire' them is lessened. Downsizing to 22 just means merging smaller Wards together for about 100,000 constituents per Ward. That's still a small enough a population for one City Councillor and his/her staff to macromanage and still being able to occasionally address narrow specific interests like the issue of that quadriplegic family in the Beach whom Bussin in her zeal denied them the right to make their home wheelchair accessibility and are now being forced out the neighbourhood. So much for lefties caring more about the plight of the minority; I bet Ford would've allowed the wheelchair lift in and after a week dissenting neighbours would have just moved on to something else. But I digress. What a lot anti-Fords fail (or refuse) to realize is that a lot of time and money is wasted to keep bureaucrats on the payroll while due to all the red tape nothing actually gets done. How long has it been since the Jarvis St bike lanes been a divisive issue now?
 
js97 said:
I think you should tell that to the councillors...Too many don't show up to the meetings!
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Do we have long term attendance records for each councilor? if you have them, please share because I can't seem to find anything other than the attendance article the Star wrote a few weeks ago. If you don't have the stats, you sure better have something to back up your claim.
 
jn_12 said:
Do we have long term attendance records for each councilor? if you have them, please share because I can't seem to find anything other than the attendance article the Star wrote a few weeks ago. If you don't have the stats, you sure better have something to back up your claim.
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http://www.robford.ca/votedetails.asp
 
Rob Ford's records are incomplete - he only lists a select few votes that he finds offensive or whatever. He also obviously doesn't list votes he wasn't present at, even though he has a mediocre attendance record. You can find detailed records of Council Votes on the City's website, though be prepared to spend a long time going through documents.
 
Each session of city council has a roll call vote for attendance. To check, I went through all those votes for 2009 (the last complete year). There were 98 such votes in total. Here is how many each councillor missed (in bold those running for mayor):

Miller 35
Mammoliti 35
Augimeri 34
Shiner 34
Ainslie 33
Feldman 33
Grimes 29
Rae 29
Giambrone 29
Palacio 28
Filion 26
McConnell 23
Moeser 21
Fletcher 21
Ootes 21
Perruzza 19
Heaps 19
Ashton 18
Ford 17
Minnan-Wong 17
Jenkins 16
Saundercook 16
Nunziata 15
Lee 15
Walker 15
Thompson 13
Cho 13
Pantalone 12
Lindsay Luby 12
Milczyn 11
De Baeremaeker 11
Mihevc 11
Stintz 10
Parker 9
Moscoe 8
Vaughan 8
Bussin 8
Hall 7
Kelly 6
Carroll 6
Davis 5
Del Grande 4
Di Giorgio 4
Perks 1
Holyday 0

Miller has a lot of other obligations, and it is standard for the mayor to not make it to many council meetings so I'd give him a pass. That leaves Mammoliti as the worst attender that year. Plaudits go to Doug Holyday for not miissing a single session all 2009.
 
Thanks for posting that. To be fair, even missing 1/3rd of the votes isn't that bad compared to what other municipalities are dealing with. I think these stats need to be taken with a grain of salt too only because we don't really know why votes were missed. Were there other meetings that needed to be attended? was there illness? and so on. I think it also depends on which votes were missed. So if there's an issue that was going to pass easily and that councilor was in favour of it, whether he attends or not really doesn't have an impact either way. Also, quality of quantity matters sometimes. If a councilor shows up and never says a word, does it matter?

Anyways thanks again.
 
I agree that those numbers are far from the full story in terms of evaluating councillors. Voting at city council is actually pretty low on the list of priorities for what I think a good councillor doing. Under the Miller regime, if something makes it to a council vote it's only because the votes have already been assembled to pass it . Rarely are important decisions made on the council floor.

Far more important are the the committee meetings, where most of what affects a ward is decided. A quick look at the numbers shows that councillors seem to have better attendance at community council meetings. Here are the numbers for the councils where the three councillors running for mayor sit, again this is all of 2009:

Etobicoke-York (31 sessions)

Saundercook 11
Ford 9
Lindsay Luby 9
Grimes 5
Milczyn 5
Di Giorgio 4
Mammoliti 4
Holyday 3
Palacio 2
Hall 0
Nunziata 0

Toronto-East York (18 sessions)

Giambrone 6
Fletcher 3
Bussin 2
Pantalone 1
Davis 0
McConnell 0
Mihevc 0
Ootes 0
Perks 0
Rae 0
Vaughan 0
Walker 0
 
I have not yet read a rational argument for decreasing the number of elected representatives.

I am for increasing the size of counsel!!
 
I have not yet read a rational argument for decreasing the number of elected representatives.
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Here's one.

When a motion is made each councillor is entitled to a given amount of time (I think it is 5 minutes) to speak to the motion. That amounts to almost 4 hours, sure they all deserve to be heard but how different can their positions be? I think 11 councillors could cover the same ground in an hour, we just saved 3 hours on each motion by eliminating redundancies.

That is just a simple motion with no amendments, like that ever happens.
 
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