City Views
Analysis of the goings on at Toronto City Hall by Toronto Community News' resident political newshound - David Nickle.
more from this authorSmaller city council: who would have shrunk it?
City Views
Every few years, it comes up, this talk of shrinking Toronto Council. Back when Mike Harris and the Progressive Conservatives were in power, it tended to come up a lot at Queen's Park, every time Mel Lastman would get surly about the download. It came up so badly once that Council actually did shrink, from 58 members to 45 in the 2000 municipal election - and there it sits to this day. 
Well, Mike Harris and Mel Lastman are history now, so it follows that city councillor Rob Ford - the inheritor of Mike Harris' hard-core conservatism and Mel Lastman's gonzo populism - should become the wielder of the ancestral shrink ray. Ford has put a notice of motion on next week's council agenda, inviting his colleagues to slash their own numbers - something they can now do, thanks to the City of Toronto Act - down to just 23.
The motion itself is doomed, of course. When Premier Dalton McGuinty gave Toronto Council the power to decide its own composition, he virtually guaranteed that it would forever remain the same. The fact that the incorrigibly unpopular Ford is the one to bring the motion forward only makes its quick demise more likely.
But it would be a mistake for the rest of us to dismiss the notion as quickly as the rest of council no doubt will. The fact is that the City of Toronto Act, and the new set of procedures that Toronto Council has adopted to make its meetings run more smoothly, do present an opportunity of sorts. It's a different Toronto Council now than it was then.
Back in the day, committee meetings could go on for days and council meetings could last for weeks, because literally everything was on the table. The municipal structure was a work in progress and the mayor only nominally more powerful than a councillor.
Today, Mayor David Miller wields considerably more power - and if the recommendations contained in his external panel on efficiency are to be taken into effect, he'll wield more still. Committee work is not what it used to be, with many of council's committees finishing their business by their lunch break. Council meetings are still lengthy compared to other municipalities - but you have to expect that, given that that's the only place councillors actually get together and debate as a group.
And there are 45 of them. If there were just 23, it stands to reason that the council meetings would finish more quickly too.
Councillors, I think, realize this - which is why the only real argument remaining for a large council is one of service. Toronto has a big population, and it does fill up those wards. Councillors represent an average of 50,000 residents in those 44 wards, and many of those residents expect some good, personal service on local matters. Bigger wards mean less councillor to go around, and some of those constituents are bound to feel left out.
Those councillors point out that the savings wouldn't be that significant because of that, because the surviving 22 councillors would have to hire more office staff to deal with their larger responsibilities.
Those councillors are right - but that's only because they and their predecessors have set up a city bureaucracy that makes it almost impossible for the public to deal with problems absent a councillor's intercession. It's a self-serving machine.
And it need not be so. One could imagine a small city council with a strong mayor that enforced a responsive civil service that dealt courteously and effectively with the public nine times out of ten.
One could imagine it - but seeing it happen is as likely an event as seeing council vote to do anything but trash Rob Ford's shrinking council motion when it hits the floor next week.
