I find some of the anti-Council ranting to be bizarre. As far as I can tell, the small amount of "power" that the Council has (read the April sprint meeting logs and the subsequent fallout on various public channels for that particular can of worms) doesn't have anything to do with these forums nor really anything to do with telling the community what to do or how to do it.

The whole Council thing is a "labour of love" for all of us. There are really no benefits for the current council members. This year's Summit falls outside of our term, so no dinner with Ari, and we were all very involved community members before, so we probably would have been just as likely to receive any "developer discounts," event invitations, or whatever if we had stayed "private citizens". Actually, the Fremantle Stars and Mer developers are getting all the swag / junket love these days. You want to get sponsored trips or something? Go help developing Mer. Don't be jealous of the council members.

If there are people out there who are not convinced by what I'm saying here, then I'm looking forward to the next elections. I'm hoping the biggest dissenters will run, and I promise I will vote for them. They will discover just how much "power" we council members have. And it will be fun seeing a council full of former dissenters suddenly discovering that they're "the man" now and they were tilting at windmills and punching straw men the whole time.