I thought it was a difficult process to become eligible to vote, and that perhaps that had an impact on the low voter turnout. For the record, I wouldn't say the the current council has any kind of mandate. The low numbers of voters suggest that either not many people felt it was worth voting for a council or it was too difficult to vote. Or I could be completely wrong.

Whatever the case, more voters = more of a mandate, better for the community. And that was my point in starting this thread.

I don't think that anyone suggested being a council member would be easy and everyone would be happy with what the council does (I wasn't here then, so maybe someone did ) As a council member, I would expect that some people would be (very) vocally unhappy with things that I helped to facilitate. That's part of the job. If I feel like that will bother me too much, perhaps I shouldn't be on the council. After all even if elected, nobody is holding a gun to my head forcing me to be on the council. I'm sure everyone would understand if a newly elected council member declined the honor as being more work than they were prepared to commit to.

I realize that it is a thankless job, and it is a job. All the council members deserve our thanks and gratitude for going above and beyond to try to help the community, whether we agree with what they are doing or not. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't disagree and debate decisions, even vocally/repeatedly at times.

Frankly, I think the council could do a better job of communication and I hope the last month or so was a great learning experience for the whole community in this regard.

I agree it should be easy to identify council members, but those members have to also realize that any comment they make will be looked at differently due to their position as a council member. It is hard to gain respect and very easy to lose it.

I was merely commenting that if the council wanted to reduce their perceived power (as is sort of implied by stating the council doesn't have any power), one way would be less advertising. Any interested member after all should be able to easily find/stumble across any one of the multiple council communication formats and then easily find more information on the council. Or, perhaps the council might run across a worthy project/idea and offer assistance. If the easiest way for a member to discover the council exists is through forum signatures/titles, I believe this constitutes a communication problem.

We'll never how many if any people have failed to comment because of council members joining together in a thread. All I can say is that I have chosen not to comment at times due to the feeling it was futile to try to get the council to see my (and others) point of view. If you are having to explain the same things over and over again, perhaps there is a problem (and it's not just someone being stubborn).