Belle Meade CM Emily Evans has taken to the Tennessean touting a phone poll that she says proves that she knows the "ideal number" of CMs needed to properly govern Nashville/Davidson County and that a majority of you out there agree with her that you should have less representation in Metro government in order to have the best representation.
If that's the case, good luck with that. I know less representation will please council members and their wealthy patrons. But if most of you registered voters really believe we can shrink representation to get some ideal number, it is a sad season for local democracy in Nashville.
Please help me understand what the ideal number of CMs is and what exactly makes that number "ideal" (which is like calling it "perfect"). The argument offered by supporters is that few other cities have such large legislative bodies. So, the justifying belief of most Nashvillians is that being like other cities would make us ideal? That is supposed to convince me to abdicate the already minuscule influence I have to scrape up responses from council members on matters that concern me?
UPDATE: while we wait for someone from the "majority" to demonstrate that small legislative bodies act in the broadest interest of constituents better than large legislative bodies do, I've posted a copy of a script of the phone poll CM Evans used (no, she did not send it to me herself when I asked for it) to conclude that a majority of you desire less representation:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uT069Wxzdq4nhqHglxui5wnGQrk8hrthdutj3lTs6T4/edit
Yeah!
ReplyDeleteJeff in Madison