Councillors in Douglas have rejected proposals to reduce their number from 18 to 12.
A motion to cut the local authority’s elected representatives from 18 down to 12 has been put forward by Councillor Ann Corlett who sought to redress the perceived imbalance in the number of voters within each ward.
She had called for the change to be implemented in time for the April 2016 local authority general elections and also pushed the case for a review of ward boundaries and the number of councillors in each ward, in order to achieve ‘fairness of representation’.
A report written by assistant town clerk Paul Cowin recommended the reduction in political membership from 18 to 12, a cut in the number of councillors in each ward from three to two in time for the April 2016 elections and for work to be undertaken to balance the inequality of voter numbers within each ward in time for the council elections in 2020.
However, the executive committee voted against the first two recommendations but supported the plans to consider voter numbers.
At a full meeting of the council last week, councillors supported that stance - but not before officers had to clarify exactly what members were voting on.
During the debate, Mr Corlett (St George’s) said she believed it was the right time to reduce numbers.
She said: ‘We have an opportunity to lead the way. Public opinion is that there are too many of us here doing nothing. I can’t counter the argument that we are too many. We can operative efficiently and effectively with 12 members.’
The current number of eighteen council members was fixed in 1989 following the abolition of the Office of Alderman, and was originally based on a three-year term of office, three members representing each of six wards, with one member for each ward retiring annually by rotation.
That all changed in 2004 when four-year terms of office were introduced, with all members retiring on the same date.
The assistant town clerk’s report noted that because each ward comprised certain fixed polling districts, it was impossible to achieve a fair balance without splitting some of them, which would be a major exercise.
It was suggested that the number of wards could be reduced to four to reflect House of Keys constituencies.
Betty Quirk (Athol) said she was ‘dead against’ plans to reduce the number of councillors.
Carol Malarkey (Hills) pointed out they didn’t know what the future held for local government reform and it was probably ‘premature’ to reduce numbers. ‘I don’t think Douglas as this moment in time is ready for that,’ she said.
She highlighted another problem – with committees quite often being on the cusp of not being quorate. ‘Sometimes I feel we should have more people on committees, not less,’ she said.
David Ashford (Victoria) said he had to think long and hard whether to support the motion.
He pointed out there would no cost savings by reducing to 12 as councillors are not paid a salary. He also expressed concern that cutting numbers would reduce the scrutiny role.
He said it would ‘send out the wrong message’ and advocate a system of five local authorities with those in the north, south, east and west having 12 members each and Douglas, representing a third of the island’s population, having 18.
Ritchie McNicholl (Murrays) reckoned the numbers were right and would not advocate more members.
Council leader David Christian (Hills) said the ward boundaries were ‘totally out of sync’ with the number of people represented.
When it came to the vote, there was confusion whether councillors were voting on the proposals, or on the executive committee’s rejection of them.
Councillors voted against reducing the number of members by 13 votes to two, and against cutting the number of councillors in each ward by 12 votes to three. They supported the motion to review voter numbers in each ward by 11 votes to four.