More and more cities throughout the country are moving towards reducing the number of council members on their city council. Most recently, another city in Illinois has joined the movement. Residents of Country Club Hills, located near I-57 and I-80, between Tinley Park and Flossmoor, won court approval to move forward when their efforts were confirmed and validated by Cook County Judge Maureen Ward Kirby, when she decided to not overturn results of a ballot measure that would cut in half the size of the Country Club Hills city council.
Some of the less resident-friendly aldermen had hoped the referendum results would be overturned, but Judge Kirby ‘nixed’ the ploy and sided with the residents of Country Club Hills. There is little doubt that the same maneuver would be attempted by certain Naperville city council members if and when a similar referendum were to be approved by Naperville residents.
It happened when the Naperville city council disallowed a non-binding referendum to stop the installation of Smart Meters, even though a petition was signed by thousands of Naperville residents. And now it appears that the Naperville city council will have a hand in trying to stop the formation of districts (wards), though it was approved in a 2010 referendum to create districts. It was a landslide vote in favor of creating districts (28,238 to 14,593). That was a huge and loud two-to-one message to the officials of Naperville to ‘make it happen’, and yet the Naperville city council has delayed implementation for five (5) years until 2015 against the wishes and vote of Naperville residents.
In a previous Watchdog posting, “The Naperville city council has too many members” (4/26/11) the idea gained attention and support. If New York City can downsize it’s Super-sized soft drinks, surely the residents of Naperville can down-size it’s super-sized council.
https://citycouncilwatchdog.com/2011/04/the-naperville-city-council-has-too-many-members/
Size matters and when it comes to bureaucracies, government commissions and boards in this state/city there is a virtual explosion of needless, extravagant, wasteful, useless and expensive homes for cronies and political hacks.
IL. Has 7000+ paid government groups all getting salaries, benefits and pensions costing millions annually to the tax payers.
Most of them are gross redundancies and without working up a sweat half could be eliminated and the state/city would actually function better because they would be out of each other’s way. This city could function much better with four councilmen and one full time mayor who also was the city manager.