NORTHERN OHIO Is city's council too big, costly?

One resident wants to trim its size from 21 to fewer than 14 members.
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Despite a declining city population, the Cleveland City Council is bigger and costs more than the Columbus and Cincinnati city councils put together.
Police and firefighters with jobs on the line during budget cuts last year wondered why the city's political jobs also weren't on the chopping block.
Some are calling for amending the city charter to reduce the council's size. Since 1981, there have been 21 council members, each making nearly $68,000 a year.
"That money is twice or three times what their constituents make," said Deanna Strefas, whose husband was spared during a round of police layoffs last year. "The people paying taxes aren't winning."
Strefas has been working to gather the more than 27,000 signatures required to get a charter amendment on the November ballot that would reduce council's size. She would like council to have between nine and 14 members.
The council has 46 staff. The operation costs $6.2 million a year.
Other cities
Columbus, meanwhile, has seven council members and Cincinnati has nine. All council members in both cities represent the entire city. Their budgets are a combined $5.5 million.
Toledo has 12 council members, 15 staff and a budget of $1.7 million. Akron has 13 council members, four staff and a budget of $725,000. Some council spots in each city are at-large.
Cleveland council members say residents get better representation and quicker responses because they, with relatively small wards, are in touch with communities.
"We have a more up-close view," first-term Councilman Kevin Conwell said.
"The neighbors knock on my door and say, 'I need a job, I need a roof on my house, I need a wheelchair ramp.' We have to be job developers, marriage counselors, anything they want us to be."
Reductions elsewhere
Other big cities have recently taken steps toward streamlining. This month, Milwaukee reduced its council from 17 members to 15. Baltimore will reduce its council next year from 18 to 14. In both cases, supporters of smaller councils cited declining populations.
Larger councils -- particularly those based on geographic wards, without at-large members -- tend to get less done, said Dennis Judd, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a fellow at the Great Cities Institute.
"You need to have a means of providing leadership to the whole city," he said. "With wards of that size, you get into really parochial politics. The interests of a city cut across neighborhoods."
Shrunken already
Cleveland had 33 council members until 1981, when the charter was amended by a popular vote, shrinking the council to its current size.
Since 1981, the population has declined by 17 percent, to about 478,400. Each council member now represents about 23,000 people.
Each Columbus council member earns $35,547 and represents 102,000 residents. In Cincinnati, each council member earns $57,900 with one representative for every 37,000 residents.