City Charter Review: Community meeting at Tri-C tonight
The first of three Cleveland City Charter Review Commission community meetings will take place tonight from 6 to 8 pm at the Tri-C Metro Campus (Campus Center Bldg., Room 10). The purpose of the session is to get proposals, ideas and feedback from the public, so if you have something to say about the City Charter please come out and say it!
Tomorrow morning, at the regular weekly Commission meeting at City Hall, Council President Martin Sweeney will start the bidding on “the Council reduction issue”. I understand that Sweeney will be proposing a reduction from 21 Council wards to 17.
Phyllis Cleveland and I were on WCPN’s Sound of Ideas this morning talking with Dan Molthroup about Council size and a couple of other issues. Listen to the program here.
(As a bonus, we’re followed by County Treasurer Jim Rokakis on the cheerful subject of imminent cuts in tax revenue and public services due to the county’s foreclosure crisis.)
June 18th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Well in 1981 when the 21 council was adopted each person represented about 27,300 citizens based on the census population number of 573,800. I would assume that this wasn’t the exact break down for each ward, but it seems close enough. And heck that is about the size of some suburbs.
Now assuming that there was an even decrease in population (which we all know isn’t true) that means that the current estimate of 444,313 leaves 21,150 persons per council member.
So using the basis established in 1981, there should be about 16.2 wards.
At the very least I bet that the ward boundaries should be redrawn to give an even constituent base for each council member. But not to reduce the council to 16 or even less would be criminal at this time when the city has so little funding for the services expected. Heck the city has pawned off just about everything it can to the county and state already.
The thousand dollar question is, can anyone get the council to agree to the reduction?