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Originally Posted by J.OT13
The benefit in general? I thought you meant from Ford's perceptive.
Bigger council can mean more chaos, more long, dragging pointless debate.
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If there's a problem with "pointless debate", that's a job for the rules of procedure to deal with.
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You look at transit planning in Toronto, they continuously change the plans and change the game and end up with multi-billion dollar disasters that serve low-density suburbs and completely ignore the over-capacity and undeserved downtown. Everyone is looking out for their little corner of the city (and themselves).
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And the connection of this phenomenon to the size of council is... ?
Ottawa's much smaller council has had the exact same problem with transit-dithering. It still has the problem of transit policies which pander to the suburbs.
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With a smaller council, you might end up with people who have more of a city-wide view.
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If you want people with a city-wide view, you add at-large councillors. No matter what the size and number of wards, ward councillors, in Toronto or Ottawa or anywhere, are only ever going to be governed, in the end, by how they think their conduct, decisions, votes, or pronouncements play in their own ward.
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It's also easier to negotiate with a few than it is with a class-room of self-involved idiots.
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Yes, as Jim Watson has shown time and time again, it's easier to horse-trade and backroom deal with a smaller number of councillors.
This, to me, is an argument in favour of a larger council, not a smaller one.
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