since at least two Council members are on the subcommittee, one wonders how much of resouce drain this effort will be. From what I can tell, it’s nearly impossible to get any sort of citizen representation from the Council as it is. Read a local newspaper and piece the stories together – the subtext is that the Council does City staff bidding, not the other way around. City staff hides what they can and what they can’t…tells Council not to worry their pretty little heads about it. And Council seems quite happy abdicating leadership, after all they have jobs, lives, families, health insurance. Once they are elected, we never seem to hear from them again – and, just read the editorials, they don’t even return phone calls. They finally show up again when they are up for election for the next rung on their political career.

So, what are the arcane problems with the Charter? From what I can see, it’s that Council is not required to represent citizens. How about we redo the Charter so that each Council member has a ‘district’ to represent and to answer to? Along with that, how about some accountability and authority to investigate City Staff? How about penalties for being irresponsible and allowing financal scandal, bribery, etc. to occur? How about a Charter that requires City administrators to live and pay taxes in the City they manage?

If the Charter is to be reviewed, how about the citizens deciding how we want to be governed and by whom?

How do they end up with figures like $15, 107.40 as opposed to $15,000?

I also wonder if it’s cash compensation, where if I were elected I could get the money to our portion of my wife’s health package that AUSD doesn’t pay.

By the way, school board member received $150 per meeting and have options to enroll for health coverage that is provide to AUSD employees.