TERM LIMITS MAKE SENSE
Let’s hope city council embraces term limits and ensures there’s more fresh faces in local government. Councillors Joe Magliocca and Sean Chu believe civic politicians should be limited to serving three consecutive terms, at most. They’ll soon ask their colleagues to support their motion, which would instruct administration to come up with a plan by the end of March to implement the measure for the 2021 election.
Setting limits on how long council members can remain in office would also require the provincial government to change existing law.
The proposal deserves the support of council members. It’s difficult for challengers to unseat an incumbent because of the name recognition the mayor and councillors inherently enjoy. When Calgarians are presented with their ballot, they’re inclined to vote for someone they’ve heard of, rather than a faceless stranger. That reality partially explains why all the incumbents were returned to office in October.
And with party labels being absent from civic politics, council members are elected as individuals, rather than as candidates running under a banner, such as Liberal, Conservative or New Democrat. That means we don’t see the kind of dramatic changes that are quite common at the provincial and federal level, where one party is swept from power and another takes its place.
Instead, Calgarians leave the job of running the city to familiar faces, folks who might as well be part of the entrenched bureaucracy, rather than avid overseers of the public purse.
One of the benefits of setting limits on how long city council members can remain in office is that it would underscore the fact civic politics is about public service. It’s not intended to be a long-term career, unlike occupations such as plumbing or accounting.
“You lose your mojo after a few years,” Magliocca, who is starting his second term on council, told Postmedia columnist Rick Bell earlier this week.
“Your first term, you’re really learning the ropes and getting to know how the administration works. The second term, you’re really fighting to get stuff done. The third term, you’re going to get a lot of stuff done.
“After that, you know what, you’re braindead.”
Frankly, given that civic politicians are now elected to four-year terms, two stints seems sufficient. New ideas and fresh blood — as Calgarians have seen with the four novices elected to fill seats left vacant in last fall’s election — are a breath of fresh air. The new councillors bring curiosity and different ways of thinking to their task — something that serves Calgarians well.