Shouldn't any discussion about changing the size of the Duluth City Council revolve around how to best represent the city's residents?
You'd think so, but in proposing to reduce the council's elected membership from nine to seven, some members of the Duluth Charter Commission are offering every reason but that. The council "is just too unwieldy," they say. Councilors spend too much time driving the city's agenda rather than approving or disapproving the administration's actions. And, doggonit, other cities have smaller councils, so we should, too.
There may be a legitimate basis for some of the concerns, but there are also an equal number of reasons to dismiss them. If the council is "unwieldy" with nine members, how will increasing the workloads of seven remaining councilors solve that?
As far as driving the city's agenda, isn't the council supposed to do that if it's supposed to function as a representative voice of the citizenry? Not all ideas have to come from the administration, as Charter Commission member Andy Peterson of the Chamber of Commerce suggested.
And while it's true that some similar-size cities have smaller councils, others have larger bodies. Try fitting the 24 members of the Board of Aldermen of Newton, Mass., (pop. 83,829) into Duluth's City Council chambers.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Charter Commission's discussion should be about how best to enhance public representation, something that could be accomplished not by eliminating council positions but by changing them. Rather than having four councilors representing the general interests of the city at large, the commission could consider seating three At-Large councilors and increasing the number of district councilors more in touch with parochial issues from five to six. The commission's most recent proposal would get rid of two At-Large seats.
The whole discussion is "a needless disruption," as Charter Commission member Dan Maddy said last week. Which raises perhaps the biggest question of all: Just where is this push to change the size of the City Council coming from anyway?
Newton, Mass.?
