Does Lantzville REALLY Need 7 Council Members?!?

A group of interested and concerned Lantzville residents have taken it upon themselves to spend the time and effort to research key characteristics/indicators of other 'comparable' municipal councils in B.C. in an effort to develop a comparison with the situation here in Lantzville. Here is a summary of the information gathered:


 Based on this information, Jack deJong sent an email to the Mayor and Council asking them to put forth and support a motion to have a referendum to reduce the size of our council from 7 members to 5 (they are the only ones who can do this). [Even if the motion is passed at least 6 months before the next local government election (Nov. '14), and the referendum question is approved by the residents of Lantzville, the change would not actually take place until the following election, currently scheduled for 2017 - a long time to wait!]. Here, from the Minutes of the meeting at which they received Mr. Dejong's correspondence (July 11/11), is what their response was:

Mayor Haime commented that:
· Recently Council received correspondence from Jack de Jong requesting that Council consider reducing its size to 5 members in order to reduce administration costs. Mayor Haime advised that he would bring this request forward to Council for consideration. Members of Council commented as follows:
- When the District incorporated there was discussion and community input received that the preference was for a 7 member Council.
- It is not a good idea to have a 5 member Council because then the quorum is reduced to 3 people and it is not advisable to have 3 people making decisions for an entire community

Contrary to what the Mayor is reported as saying above, it was councillor Negrave who brought forward the motion at the next Regular Council meeting on July 25/11. As a fairly involved member of the community since 1991, I remember the Restructure Committee (of which now councillor Haime, councillor Dempsey and councillor Crayston were members) discussing the number of Council members but I don't recall any "community input" being solicited on this issue. The referendum question we were asked to vote on was, "(a)re you in favour of the incorporation of Lantzville as a municipality. Yes or No?" - no mention of structure (Town, District, etc.) or council size. As late as a couple of weeks before the actual vote, the information put out by the Restructure Committee still spoke of "a mayor and 4 or 6 other councillors" in their mail-out to residents.
As far as the meeting goes, here is their record of what happened:

MOVED Councillor Negrave that Council direct staff to draft a referendum question for the General Election to be held November 19th, 2011, asking if the size of Council should be reduced from 7 to 5 members (4 councillors and 1 mayor).

THE MOTION FAILED DUE TO THE LACK OF A SECONDER

When a motion is seconded, all it means is that it provides the opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of the issue at-hand and contemplate further action/follow-up. So, in this particular case and, even though Mr. DeJong had provided specific numbers supporting his contention that our Council is too big, no one, other than Councillor Negrave, was even prepared to discuss it! You will also note that Councillor Negrave's motion asked for the question to be put to the voters of Lantzville this November but Council apparently doesn't trust us to make the right decision.

C-109-11 MOVED Councillor Negrave, SECONDED Councillor Bratkowski that Council direct staff to prepare a report regarding the pros and cons of reducing the size of Council from 7 to 5 members (4
councillors and 1 mayor).

CARRIED

By only supporting the motion to ask Staff to prepare a report, they virtually ensured that nothing will now happen on this issue until at least 2014. Update 140214 - to date, no such report has been presented by the District's staff to Council.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out here that there are 60 municipalities in B. C. (out of about 158) who currently have 5 member Councils [including nearby Qualicum Beach with 6.5 x # permanent employees, 4.5 x the expenses and 2.5 times the population] and who seem to be getting by, even in the face of the quorum issue raised by our Council. Certainly the issue of a 3 member quorum is no more 'controversial'/problematic than having two Council votes come from the same household (such as is the case with Denise and Colin Haime). I think with a little planning, lack of a quorum (3 present with a 5 member council) can easily be made a non-event.

Couple this with the big percentage raise (43.5% for Mayor; 36.5% for Councillors over 3 years) they gave themselves early last year (see my Bog article http://vigilantz.blogspot.com/2011/11/raises-raises-everywhere-at-least-for.html) and you can see that things are indeed 'rosy' for the current Lantzville Council.