Cut Numbers Of elected Officials

Where as: Vancouver is a city of 600,000 with a City Council made up of a Mayor and 10 councilors or one councilor for every 60,000 people.
HRM, a city of 375,000 +/-, has City Council made up of a Mayor and 23 councilors or one for every 17,391 people. Over three times more than BC on a per capita basis.

AND

Where as: When you look at the provincial numbers in BC the province has a population of 4,115,000 +/- governed by 79 MLA's in the provincial legislature or one person for every 53,000 people. Nova Scotia, with a population of 950,000 +/-, has 52 MLA's or one MLA for every 18,269. This time 2.8 times as many MLA's as BC on a per capita basis.

AND

Where as: If BC worked like Nova Scotia Vancouver would have 35 city councilors instead of 10 a rise of 350\% and the provincial legislature would have 225 MLA's instead of 79 an increase of 284\%

AND.

Where as: We can still have better representation per elected official than Vancouver and BC and make drastic cuts in the cost of government by setting HRM seats and Legislature seats at 25,000 people per councilor or MLA. That would drop the number of councilors from 23 to 16 in HRM and the number of MLA's from 52 to 38. A drastic saving while still leaving us well ahead of BC as far as the number of people represented by each elected official.

AND

Where as: It's wrong that cutbacks in Nova Scotia always seem to fall on education, roads, medical care and other needed services while the elected officials continue to eat up tax dollars at a rate three time that of BC.

We the undersigned call on the Provincial Government of Nova Scotia to change the elections act. Change the number of people per elected officials in HRM and Nova Scotia to 25,000 people per representative and alter the district boundaries accordingly lowering the number of HRM councilors from 23 to 15 and the number of MLAs from 52 to 38.