Our problem with our current City Council is that we become stagnant. We have people who tend to just go along to get along, and that is a real problem when they’re supposed to be representing the rights of the taxpayers of our city, whether that be residential or commercial taxpayers.
We need new blood every once in a while to be injected into City Council to ensure that innovative new ideas are coming to the forefront and that past partisanship is dissolved. Our current Council has a way of voting as a block so that we end up with a lot of 6-5 votes over and over and over again on similar things.
I propose changing our election term limits so Councillors may be elected for a maximum of two terms and the Mayor may be elected for a maximum of two terms. If a Councillor is very successful, they could be a Councillor twice and a Mayor twice and then that’s the end of their service to the City. This will ensure that people with newer ideas can start fresh.
Also, people with a more stringent eye on how the Administration operates can get into the Council and start asking the tough questions. I believe that the newest of Councillors asked the most honest of questions, and I think over time, Councillors tend to give in to too many requests from Administration without technically scrutinizing those requests.
Suppose these election term limits are adjusted in conjunction with the spending limits. In that case, it should open up representation from all walks of life within Saskatoon instead of the more wealthy who have the latitude to run for such things instead of working at a day-to-day job.
The last thing I would like is to change the limit for signatures for the candidate form for Mayor to increase from 25 to 50 signatures. It’s a reasonable change for someone seeking the top office of the City but still within reasonable reach for someone less connected but with some community support to start. If a person cannot garner 50 signatures with all the time allowed to gather them, then they logically do not appear to have a foundation of support to attempt to seek the highest office.
The best way to reduce an excessive amount of Mayor candidates is to start off with the requirement for basic popularity in the beginning.