Reply to Will "term limit on MoCo Council members" help MoCo schools?

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Reply to "Will "term limit on MoCo Council members" help MoCo schools?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I oppose term limits in general because they are limits on voter power, not office holder power. You can vote them out any time. And actually voters in this county are more educated and more involved than most, and you "do" vote people out pretty quickly.

But term limits don't let you keep the good ones. Term limits in particular limit knowledge and experience in office. And especially at the local level, that matters.  It shifts power to career employees, who you can't fire by voting out of office. In some jurisdictions, it shifts power to lobbyists. Again because they've been around and have the knowledge of how things run.  Lobbyists really aren't a problem here.  But they are at the state level.  Newbie elected officials rely heavily on those advisers who have the institutional knowledge, because they don't have it themselves.  That could be good, or it could be bad. But you the voter don't have control over it.

The 12 year limit is better than an 8 year limit in this regard. Not as harmful.

And FWIW, most of those Councilmembers who'd be affected in 2018 are likely running for Executive. So term limits won't matter for them. They'd all be precluded from running for their council seat again. [/quote]

ALL of them are running. There's only one decent one in the mix.[/quote]

None of the ones running for Executive are any good. Rice and Katz are the only decent ones, and they will stay.[/quote]
Rice? Seriously? He is the embodiment of an empty suit. And a bit of an arrogant jerk as well.

Elrich is the only good one on the council. He is probably the only one that seems to truly care about the county, the residents and the future. The rest are interested only in furthering their own agendas and doing whatever their developer fundraisers want.

Katz seems okay too. But Rice, no effin' way.

On the school issue, there are two/three main ways that the council can influence schools. The main one would be to approve higher capital budgets for more school construction, perhaps also through issuing more bonds. After that, the council has a lot of authority to curb development to ensure that schools are not overburdened.

The problem right now as I understand it, we don't have the money to approve more capital projects and issuing more bonds would affect our fiscal outlook and then on the second part, they are so in the thrall of developers that they refuse to say no. They will be voting on a new subdivision staging policy next week (conveniently after the election) that is basically a giveaway to developers. The amount that developers pay in impact taxes don't even come close to offsetting the costs to the county in terms of schools and roads. They are asking for slightly more for schools, but cutting impact taxes for transportation. So it's a net wash and means that for every new development, the county actually loses money. It's a disaster that will drive us to a breaking point.[/quote]

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