History

• In the spring of 2005, I was among several people approached by a then-current and a former City Council member to explore whether there would be support for reducing the size of the City Council. Below are some of the documents generated as part of that discussion. Although there seemed to be significant support for reducing Council size, it was overwhelmed by more pressing and high-profile issues.
• In 1994, the City considered reducing the Council size from 9 to 7, but found little support for the proposal. Below are redundant versions of key documentation from that time These electronic copies were created from different hardcopies on different scanners with different software. Hopefully, any uncorrected errors in one can be resolved by the others.
  • Pros and Cons (3 pages) (MS Word, 82 Kbytes)
  • Introduction/Overview + Pros and Cons (6 pages) (MS Word, 47Kbytes)
  • PDF directly from hardcopy: 300 dpi - suitable for producing hardcopy or doing character-recognition
    Note: these are very large files
    • Pros and Cons (3 pages) (12 Mbytes)

Advocacy - Council Reduction

Note: These are working documents. They are an evolving attempt to capture the various viewpoints and arguments for and against this issue.

• Motivations for Council Reduction: a statement of the problems, concerns and goals behind this proposal. Does not go into the pros and cons.
• Scenarios for implementing reduction of Council size

Advocacy - Popularly/Directly Elected Mayor

Note: These are working documents. They are an evolving attempt to capture the various viewpoints and arguments for and against this issue.