Saturday, April 22, 2006

fun with edmonton city council.

Tuesday, I went to the City of Edmonton's Transportation and Public Works committee meeting. It was actually not as boring as it sounds as a tonne of Councillors showed up to hear the presentation that morning (those there included Councillors Michael Phair, Jane Batty, Kim Krushell, Terry Cavanagh, Janice Melnychuk, Ed Gibbons, Karen Leibovici, Linda Sloan, Bryan Anderson, and Mayor Stephen Mandel).

On another note (unrelated to the presentation I went to), Edmonton City Council operates under the Ward system, with two Councillors for each of the six wards. The City of Edmonton is currently reviewing this system and are accepting public input in the process. Here are the options they are considering:

Essentially there are two questions on the table.

  1. Should the number of Councillors be increased from 12 to 14?
  2. Should each ward have single or dual representation?

Out of these questions come four possible choices:

  1. The current six wards with two Councillors per ward
    • Average 118,732 people per ward
  2. 12 wards with one Councillor per ward
    • Average 59,366 people per ward
  3. Seven wards with two Councillors per ward
    • Average 101,770 people per ward
  4. 14 wards with one Councillor per ward
    • Average 50,855 people per ward

Based on 2005 census data

5 comments:

  1. So what sort of system do you prefer? What were the compelling arguments?

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  2. I like the larger number of wards that each have a smaller number of people in them. It seemed to work really well in Calgary and i found it made the councilor fairly accessable.

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  3. I think the question that needs to be asked is, what would Trudeau do?

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  4. Let's ask Conservative MLA Hung Pham what system works best for him, and then assume his suggestion will lead to more voting irregularities, and do the opposite of what he says.
    KL

    ReplyDelete