Lantzville Council Size 2014 Referendum

As a result of calls from the Editor of the 'new' Lantzville Log (who we now know to have been former Mayor, Colin Haime) for residents to weigh in on the question of the size of Lantzville Council (currently a Mayor and 6 councillors), I submitted the following:

   Having spent a fair bit of time researching and thinking about this issue, I support reducing our council to 5 members. Let me share with you why.
   On the aspect of representation, it is the quality of the members, not the number that is important - more bodies does not necessarily mean better representation! On the aspect of quorum, 57 5-member B.C. municipalities are still able to function. On the issue of fostering diversity of opinion, I note the previous Council had 3 accountants, two of whom who were co-habiting!
   Population alone is a very poor indicator of government workload. Other factors such as the no. of permanent employees, the amount of annual expenses and the length of pipes+roads also should be considered. The Town of Qualicum Beach (6.5 x our # perm. employees, 4.5 x our expenses, 2 x the km. of pipes+roads, 2.5 x our population) has had 5 members for the past 71 years, and have provided capable oversight.
   Lantzville spent $927,000 on Administration in 2012, on total expenses of 2.6 M$ - 2 councillors plus expenses costs $24,000/yr at current levels. We need to look at all ways to save money and council should not be immune to that.
     Back in 2011, former councillor Negrave introduced a motion to have a referendum to reduce council size - it failed due to lack of a seconder - in other words, no one on that Council wanted to even discuss the pros and cons. Why would council, who works for and is paid by the taxpayers, not want to give the residents the opportunity to determine the size of that council? We didn't have a say on the original council size so it is entirely appropriate that we have our say now 10+ years on. And if it should increase voter turnout, how is that bad?!
   Send all council members an email sharing your opinion in this election year.

Interestingly, they published the piece, as submitted, except for the second sentence in the first paragraph and the last sentence in the entire piece?!
[UPDATE 14 11 18] We now know that, according to the preliminary results, the residents of Lantzville have voted 59% in favour of reducing our council size from 7 to 5. Even though returning councillor David Scott recently tried to use the very same Qualicum Beach as a reason to reject reducing our council size, the residents of that community actually voted 70% in favour of keeping their council size at the same level (5) that they have had for the past 71 years. Part of his argument was that Qualicum Beach had been paying their 4 councillors as if they were doing the work of six (I would assume based on some impression of time commitment) so that Lantzville wouldn't save any money by reducing our council size but, as one can clearly see from the above information, we don't have nearly the same workload as them so there is no reason to expect that we would have to similarly increase the pay of our 4 councillors. I think both communities got it right!