Fewer councilors would make things worse

​At the April 13 meeting the Charter Commission voted to reduce the size of the City Council from the present 24 to 13.

The merits of this reduction were discussed (briefly) in the context of several suggestions that were listed in the meeting notice. One of the items that stood out to me asked: “Would a smaller Council be more effective or efficient?”

There was no definition of the word “efficient” even though I raised the question in the public comment period at the beginning of the meeting. Our governments are established to be democratic, not necessarily efficient. If you want efficiency in government there are plenty of models for that and I daresay you wouldn’t like to live under any of them. — Ernest Loewenstein, Newton Highlands