Quote:
Originally Posted by JK47
Shrinking the size of the City Council is just incredibly short-sighted. Whatever savings are wrung out of the process will be minuscule compared to the consequences of concentrating power in fewer individuals and the dilution that will result for individual voters. When fewer people represent more citizens it takes a lot more time, power, money, and people in order to reach the critical mass needed to influence the decision-making process of your representative. This kind of concentration disadvantages the public versus larger and wealthier interests since the latter have the resources to reach the ear of such officials whilst the former will need to spend a lot more time accumulating that kind of power.
With more power will come more opportunity for corruption. With fewer people involved you'll have a smaller circle of potential co-conspirators and thus a lower probability of leaks.
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At this point we have decades of history of just how awful our city government is. NYC with 8.6 million people has 51 city council members. LA with 4 million people has 15 city council members.
Chicago does not need 50 Aldermen for 2.7 million people. Our current system is basically set up for graft and corruption.