Quote:
Originally Posted by lrt's friend
Ottawa is a little different because it has a very large rural expanse. Reducing the size of council too much will result in no rural representation on council and therefore no say on affairs that affect rural residents. Someone said to reduce council to 8 in Ottawa, 4 inside the Greenbelt and 4 outside the Greenbelt. At that point, those 4 councillors outside the Greenbelt will mainly serve the large suburban satellite cities. The other concern when reducing council is that the mayor's powers increase. This is something that Doug Ford supports and is worrisome. I prefer the consensus model of running a city rather than having a strong man acting as a CEO dictator. From an Ottawa perspective, I can see how this can become problematic as the current mayor is already very effective at running the city 'his way'.
Others have stated that reducing council makes councillors look at the bigger picture more, and that it is a good thing to forget about local issues. I question the latter part of this argument. If nobody elected is concerned about issues at a neighbourhood level, how do we make sure that neighbourhoods are working well, that things are repaired and that neighbourhoods don't descend into crime ridden slums. I do not think we can rely on community associations alone as these are very hit and miss and they are non-democratic bodies often with specific agendas. My own neighbourhood has not had a community association for decades because of lack of cohesion.
|
As long as councillors are elected by ward rather than at large, I'm not sure why this would be so. More likely, their focus would remain on an expanded "local".