Forget the symptoms, fight the disease
HRM Council met last night and discussed the issue of its size. To no one’s surprise, Council decided it was …
Over-governed?
By Trevor J. Adams | May 20, 2010Allnovascotia.com is reporting that HRM Council will likely drop three Councillors when the next municipal election rolls around, cutting its size to 20 Councillors. A review-committee report is spurring the move, with Council itself making the final decision in a vote three weeks from now. The last time this came up to vote, the Councillors voted firmly in favour of keeping their jobs. With a budget crunch and a groundswell of public anger over government excesses, the cut seems more likely to go through this time. At Halifax Magazine, we’re unabashedly in favour of the idea—Halifax has more councillors per capita than any other similarly sized city in Canada. Over-governed means badly governed, so over the coming weeks we’re going to add our voice to this debate. Check back often for web-exclusive editorials, a message from our publisher and more.
And what do you think? Post a comment and share your thoughts.
This is welcome news, but rather than focusing on absolute numbers, let’s focus on the ratio of elected officials to citizens. Does a municipality of 380,000 people need 23 counselors and a mayor? In Halifax, we currently have one elected official for every 16,000 residents. By comparison:
Toronto – 44 Councillors and a Mayor – one elected official for every 123,000 residents.
Edmonton – 12 Councillors and a Mayor – one elected official for every 79,600 residents
Winnipeg – 15 Councillors and a Mayor – one elected official for every 41, 950 residents
Smaller cities have much lower ratios, in line with Halifax –
St.t John’s – 10 Councillors and a Mayor – one elected official for every 16,500 residents
Saint John – 10 Councillors and a Mayor – one elected official for every 11.125 residents
It seems to me that 10 Councillors and a mayor provides a city with the critical mass it needs to effectively govern. If Halifax adopted this model, we would have one elected official for every 34, 545 residents. That sounds about right to me.
I would like to see Council down-sized, because I would like to see some streamlining. Maybe if the size of council was cut by 25% then debates would be shorter and more could be done. It is painful to watch each Councillor take his/her turn speaking to the most mundane topics.
If we are talking Council reform, I would like to see the focus be on reducing secret meetings and parochialism on the part of Councillors. These issues are much more important to me than the size of Council.
Toronto has one city councillor for every 123,500 people (approximately). This means that if Halifax had the same level of representation per capita, our city council would consist of 3 or 4 members (including the Mayor!). While I’m not suggesting that a cut this drastic should (or could) be made, it highlights just how disproportionately we are overgoverned.
Change is definitely needed – however, one of my favourite quotes from Abraham Lincoln is the “change is not alwyas progress” While totalling agreeing that we are over governed from having four provincial governments, too many municipalities, too many councillors in HRM, it always seem the easy solution to cut the people quotient which is not the whole problem but part of the systemic one. Too many organizations cut staff first insstead of looking to see where the problem is, where true economies can be made. There is so much superfuity and duplication within the various governments. What use are the school boards for instance if not only as a buffer between the provincial government and the people. Removing three councillors – from where – why not look at the job Cpuncillors do and where it could be streamlined to perhaps half the number – what does replacing only three do to fixing the system?
j
The move to a smaller, more efficient municipal council is overdue in HRM. We demonstrated an understanding of the importance of streamlining when we introduced imalgamation, however, by retaining such a large and cumbersome council infrastructure, we failed to remove the “silo” nature of each being out for his/her own. I vote for a smaller municipal council… a change in some of the representation would be good too!