At-large council members could provide some recourse when the ward council
member is unresponsive. Yes I know that the proper thing to do with an
unresponsive council member is to wait until the next election and then
vote for someone else, but that doesn't address the problem while it is
occurring. What happens now is that certain council members act like
at-large representatives of certain populations. So when my council member
ignores me, I bug someone elses council member, who in turn neglects some
of his or her own constituents in order to respond to me.
Yes, we do have a mayor. Maybe at-large council members wouldn't be any
more repsonsive than the mayor. But not necessarily. Presumably, they
wouldn't have as much of an administrative function, and they wouldn't have
as many people working for them. They would be much less buffered from
actual contintuents than the mayor is.
Rosalind Nelson
Bancroft
At 09:20 PM 2/13/01 -0600, Richard McMartin wrote:
>
>We already have one "at large" councilor: a.k.a: mayor. That is quite
>enough at large councilors. At large elected officials at this level
>just gives the majority party more power. Not that it would make much
>difference right now with the current council makeup - but it could at
>some time in ways that you might not like.
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