Special Feature: How big should council be?

THUNDER BAY – How many councillors should the city have? That's one of the questions residents are now being asked to consider in the phase-two consultations for city's Council Composition Review.

In the phase-one consultations, the city found that 72 per cent of survey respondents felt the current size of council, 12 councillors and a mayor, was not appropriate. Asked how many councillors there should be, the responses averaged out to 8.6. 

The two options currently under consideration both propose to reduce council by two, for an 11-member council.

According to Dr. Robert Williams, a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, subtracting two council seats isn't going to dent the city's budget.

“Nobody legally gets rich for serving on city council,” Williams said.

The base wage for a councillor in Thunder Bay is just under $32,000 a year.

Williams has worked as a consultant for several municipalities undergoing similar processes, including Burlington, where he said council was looking to expand their council.

“I looked at what they get paid and what the city budget was. My calculation was that adding another councillor would amount to something like 0.0003 per cent of the budget,” Williams said.

 “I mean, it was just an utterly insignificant amount but if you're enhancing representation, the cost is what you're really trying to measure.”

Taking away two council seats, means residents have two fewer representatives. It also means the workload from those seats falls onto the remaining councillors’ shoulders.

When asked what would be the appropriate number of council seats for a city this size, Williams said it depends on how many the people want representing them.

“The Municipal Act basically says for a municipality, what's called a lower-tier municipality, as long as you've got five people, that's all that matters,” said Williams.

“So, if you go any number beyond that is entirely driven to my mind by the nature of the community, by its population, by its area, by its, let's call it, complexity. So, the number is going to fluctuate widely.”

He explained that the City of London has 400,000 people and 14 wards, while the City of Burlington has just under 200,000 people and has a mayor and six councillors.  

“There's no rhyme or reason to the number. There's not a magic formula that is applied across the province to a population or a geographic area that says your council should be whatever.”

“The number 12, I assume was a compromise or maybe an arbitrary decision at the time of amalgamation. And that's open to change as long as you don't drop below five.”

In one of the options under consideration right now, the city would be divided into four wards, each with two councillors. “What it actually means is that it doubles the work because both people would represent everybody,” said Williams.

He noted the drawback to having a ward with two councillors is their engagement with the public. The workload isn’t split between “if one of them is particularly lazy, which means the other one gets most of the work”

“Alternatively, both ward councillors could compete with each other, which doesn't necessarily mean that the ward has two voices. It may have one voice going in one direction and one in another” Williams said.

He points out that this kind of competition could lead to more frustration around the council chamber as both ward councils are trying to help their continuents but have different opinions on how to solve the problem.

“You're better to have a single contact,” Williams said.

“Two-member ward to my mind is less effective than having, in this case, eight wards which elect one each. In other words, your workload is better managed when you've got half the number of people to deal with.”

“So, it's not that if you're elected in your proposed northern ward or ward one that they would each have only half of the 23,000 people. They would both have 23,000 people to deal with or whatever the numbers are.”

The city's council composition survey can be found online and paper surveys are available at City Hall and at Thunder Bay Public Library branches. A variety of in-person public feedback sessions are taking place throughout October and November.

The proposals being considered by Thunder Bay's Council Composition Committee would radically change city council and municipal elections, if passed by council. This story is part four in a series examining the potential impacts of those changes. Read part one, part two and part three.