Proposal for Elections

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Do you approve or disapprove of the above proposal?

Poll ended at Sun Oct 02, 2016 9:54 am

Approve
5
56%
Disapprove
4
44%
No opinion
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 9

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Dredge
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Proposal for Elections

Post by Dredge »

4 Councilpeople, 1 Mayor, 1 year cycle

The Council of 4 would be elected, 2 at a time, every 5 months. There would, of course be no term limits. The mayor could be elected every 8 months. Not only would this ensure a fluid Town Council without stuffing 4 or 5 people onto one ticket, it would also provide leeway to lower the cost for a concerned citizen to get involved.

Any questions?
Last edited by Dredge on Wed Sep 21, 2016 9:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Jehoshaphat »

I actually generally agree with this plan. The only change I would make is having the Council be elected every 2.5 months because sometimes things change and people just disappear from the board for awhile. I would also cut down the mayoral position to 4 months for the same reason.
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Post by SirWhit »

Why every 2.5 or 5 months? why not 2 3 or 4 months, to allow for an even number of elections in a year?
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Post by Jehoshaphat »

Because 2.5 felt like a good amount. 2 or 3 would work as well but I just thought that 2.5 seemed like a nice idea. Plus it would really help differentiate between mayor and the councilmembers.
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Post by Dredge »

+1 to both ideas.
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Post by bookworm »

I haven't thought about this too deeply because I don't want us putting a lot of time into 'fine tuning' the Council system when it was never intended to be a long term format of government. This isn't 'the way it is now', it's a temporary change up. We should be returning to traditional tickets in the near future.
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Post by DanP740 »

Year long terms is way too long. The reason for four months was because it can be hard to commit to being able to always be here for longer than that length, and as we've experienced even four months is hard to predict.
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Post by Dredge »

DanP740 wrote:Year long terms is way too long. The reason for four months was because it can be hard to commit to being able to always be here for longer than that length, and as we've experienced even four months is hard to predict.
Come to think of it, a 3 month term for councilpeople and a 4 month term for mayors, or even a 2 month term for councilpeople and a 3 month term for mayors both sound very interesting, and I think it would be very absorbing to see any of those put into practice.
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Post by snubs »

We don't need too keep the council system. the "Council Members" could be Moderators (that actually do stuff), and then of course, have the usual Mayor and Chief of Police.

I created the council because I didn't want to run as the normal "Mayor" and I wanted a team of people that would actually help and take on responsibility. So, I said everyone was equal. Our original system of Mayor and CoP with x-number of mods hasn't always been the best because all the weight of running events falls on two people (the Mayor and CoP), however, if mods were actually given things to do and expected to help, I believe things would run a lot easier.

Of course, it's hard to host events when there just isn't much participation. So it's not always our "political" system that is the cause. It's more so lack of interest and activity.
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Post by Dredge »

Now, ma'am, I don't like arguing with someone who has benefitted the ToO in so many ways, but our political system is, in fact, in need of some small adjustments. Many of us agreed that 5 different admins got alot more done in 4 or 5 months than the previous system.

If you will recall, in fact, in Term 30, Woody and Belle took power in a single-party election, which I feel wouldn't have happened if costs were much lower. But, events in real life occured that meant that both of them were not able to host the events they had promised us.

Likewise, in this term, Councilman Bren, who in many ways was slated to succeed you as the head of the Town Council, made some very intelligent real-life moves that, simultaneously, took him away from many of his duties on the ToO. However, because the Town Council picked up the slack, I personally barely even noticed.

Activity in other events is suffering because activity is down. Fmr. mayor Woody has said that activity isn't coming back, and meanwhile, everyone here, including you, are eventually going to become so involved in real life that the ToO's activity will take another major hit. That said, an objective in the next election should be to elect a user who not only adheres to Christian principles, but to marketing and communication principles that will drive up activity. An inactive mayor cannot drive up activity, but, if he is backed up by a strong Town Council, it is arguable no one will notice.
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Post by SirWhit »

Amerigo Primero wrote:Now, ma'am, I don't like arguing with someone who has benefitted the ToO in so many ways, but our political system is, in fact, in need of some small adjustments. Many of us agreed that 5 different admins got alot more done in 4 or 5 months than the previous system.

If you will recall, in fact, in Term 30, Woody and Belle took power in a single-party election, which I feel wouldn't have happened if costs were much lower. But, events in real life occured that meant that both of them were not able to host the events they had promised us.

Likewise, in this term, Councilman Bren, who in many ways was slated to succeed you as the head of the Town Council, made some very intelligent real-life moves that, simultaneously, took him away from many of his duties on the ToO. However, because the Town Council picked up the slack, I personally barely even noticed.

Activity in other events is suffering because activity is down. Fmr. mayor Woody has said that activity isn't coming back, and meanwhile, everyone here, including you, are eventually going to become so involved in real life that the ToO's activity will take another major hit. That said, an objective in the next election should be to elect a user who not only adheres to Christian principles, but to marketing and communication principles that will drive up activity. An inactive mayor cannot drive up activity, but, if he is backed up by a strong Town Council, it is arguable no one will notice.
And?

Don't you agree it's best for the hypothetical elected administration to lead in the way they want to, instead of being locked into a council system?
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Post by Dredge »

I feel that goes directly against what the rule of the people would dictate. We already have a staffer who rules how she wants, and she's doing great, trust me.
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Post by SirWhit »

Amerigo Primero wrote:I feel that goes directly against what the rule of the people would dictate. We already have a staffer who rules how she wants, and she's doing great, trust me.
The people have elected a council...three? times now. That hardly means "council rule is the only way to go."
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Post by Dredge »

Besides that, prices are too high because we can't get accurate readings on who has what money, thanks to the abolition of interest. That may work out well for the ruling class but not anyone else.

-- Sat Sep 24, 2016 4:20 pm --

I think, perhaps, if we appear headed to yet another single-party election, I should try the political party thing again...
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Post by bookworm »

You're assuming having single ticket elections is always a negative thing or sign of some problem.
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Post by Dredge »

bookworm wrote:You're assuming having single ticket elections is always a negative thing or sign of some problem.
I can because it means that, for lack of a better term, the rich fat cats spent up money to make sure the majority were surpressed because they joined after the end of interest rates. To say the least. In fact, I'm noticing that the main dissenters (2) account for more than half of all monetary holdings!

I won't speculate on motivation, but I will say that it's probably difficult for someone so fabulously wealthy to level with the concerns of Odyssey's mortal population.
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Post by bookworm »

You keep bringing up interest, but do you understand that the interest feature wasn't disabled, it's broken? Even when turned on it didn't do anything. That's why it's off, so people don't keep asking why they don't get money from it. So your assertion that the richer members got where they are by accumulating interest then turned it off so no one else could do that is unequivocally false.
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Post by snubs »

@Amerigo Primero: I don't think you understood what I said. We don't NEED a Council if the Mayor and CoP delegate responsibilities to their mods (such as, having them run events).
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Post by Dredge »

bookworm wrote:You keep bringing up interest, but do you understand that the interest feature wasn't disabled, it's broken? Even when turned on it didn't do anything. That's why it's off, so people don't keep asking why they don't get money from it. So your assertion that the richer members got where they are by accumulating interest then turned it off so no one else could do that is unequivocally false.
I'm not saying there was lewd interest involved. I'm saying that the people who could get rich got rich, then interest went away, and now the people who are rich are throwing off the numbers so no one can quite figure out how much to charge for elections. The rich people can't level with the poor people, and that's why the rich people can't see the benefits of my idea.

I love you two rich people! I do, I do. But there's no way you're gonna be able to come down to the poor, not-so-powerful people's level on this. There's nothing wrong with that. But, the truth is, the ToO has a dire lack of economic democracy, and the many poor are looking up at at the few active rich and wondering why we can't get our point across.

OCCUPY CRESTWOOD AVENUE!

Which reminds me, now the only way to make money is to post, instead of sell stuff.

Just look at yourselves! When the tide was in, you got uber-rich, while the heads were still charging $40,000 and we still had 90 users on here! However, we can't get rich like you, because interest is "broken", probably forever, so now we have to what, gamble our way to the ballot?
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Post by SirWhit »

...........what?

You realize that the rich have no influence in the election fee? That's decided soley by Catspaw.

You can sell stuff in Crestwood all you want. It's just a matter of attracting people to your shop. Advertising, marketing, etc. Stop acting like this is some kind of class warfare type thing (Don't you believe in the free market, being a staunch Republican and all?) and just get off your butt and make money.
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