Incumbency, Its Advantages and the Democratic Deficit

Once elected our city councillors can have a life time job with an indexed income (soon over 6 figures) and well above average pension. Election to this office is difficult due to the built-in advantages of incumbency of a sitting councillor: re-election is not.

Consider this set of advantages:

• councillors are being paid as they run for election.

• councillors can manage their time freely and open up large blocks of time to campaign: ABC or council meeting attendance is not obligatory
• councillors can deliver self-promoting newsletters at city expense (office budget) up to September in the election year
• councillors can get access to email addresses from personal website promotion
• councilors have access to city funds (office budgets) to stage and sponsor events
• councillors have loyal city paid staffers (most have 2-4) who can take a leave of absence or vacation time to help out the councillor's election campaign.
• councillors have four years to build up brand and fundraising connections in community

Consider this set of disadvantages:

• timed out: empty set.

The strong advantages of holding the office point to a democratic deficit:

Consider some ways to even the democratic imbalance:

DO NOT's

• do not allow city paid newsletters from the councillor's office in the election year: starting Jan 1.
• do not allow city staff to work in councillor's campaign

DO's

• set term limits (2 consecutive terms only)
• allow party politics in municipal elections.
• provide candidates a cost recovery (within current campaign expense limits) paid by the city at 50 cents per vote received
• get city citizen initiated referendum on the election ballot
  

How can we make correcting the democratic deficit imbalance an election topic in all the wards?