It’s time to start thinking about enlarging the Columbia City Council.

The current city government was put in place by a vote on April 4, 1949, that approved a home rule charter with a four-person council elected from wards plus an at-large council member who would preside and be called mayor. The council was to hire a city manager and let him or her run things.

Based on the census of 1950, each council member represented about 8,000 people. The council was increased to six in 1972, when the 1970 census showed each of the four represented about 15,000 people. The expanded council decreased that to 9,750 people.

Using the most recent estimate of city population, the six council members each represent 20,286 residents. Adding two would drop it to about 15,200; doubling it would take it back to the numbers each represented after the last expansion.

Now is the time to talk about a charter amendment. We have a council election coming up; filing for council seats ends on Tuesday. So far we only have a contested race for mayor between incumbent Brian Treece and former county clerk, state representative, labor commissioner and judge Chris Kelly. Only the incumbents Karl Skala and Ian Thomas have filed, respectively, for their Third and Fourth Ward seats.

It is also time to discuss expanding the council because we are only 15 months from the next census. A year later, the council will appoint a body to redraw ward lines. If citizens think it is a good idea, the expanded council could be elected for the first time in 2022.

Of course, the council is more expensive than it was in those days. At the time of the 1972 expansion, council members were unpaid.

Today the mayor receives a stipend of $9,000 and the council members receive $6,000, so two new council members would add $12,000 and related expenses — occasional travel and other incidentals. It would have to be increased in twos to maintain an odd number of members and avoid tie votes.

Another negative to this idea is the potential lengthening of council meetings that already can drag into the early morning hours. One community activist I floated this idea to scoffed at the thought of it, calling it a chance for more rich white people to mount a platform to lecture us.

I countered that it would create a more diverse and representative group.

The problem with the council, came the reply, is that it is about people who have power making rules so they can stay in power.

It’s hard to argue with someone convinced the system is rotten. I didn’t pursue it that day but here I would contend that we’ve got a pretty good system.

Despite the recent strain with the resignation of Columbia city manager Mike Matthes and police chief Ken Burton, it has served us pretty well.

We have a vibrant city growing faster than any community outside the state's two major metro areas. Columbia is four times the size it was when the charter was adopted in the first flush of post-war growth.

We have extremely low unemployment with a diverse economy. The electric and water utilities are reliable.

Columbia has a beautiful park system and created one of the first rails-to-trails projects on the abandoned spur line of the MKT Railroad. Citizen action turned a pipe taking effluent to the Missouri River into a wetlands treatment system that draws recreational use, enacted reduced penalties for marijuana and is now spurring adoption of community policing by the police department.

I could continue but the bottom line is we have a city that works, albeit sometimes not as well as we would like and sometimes not in the ways we would like.

An expanded council could make it work better. There could be standing committees, for example, to develop expertise in the operation of selected city departments or functions.

While the council is not supposed to interfere in operations, it does approve the city budget each year and we have an ongoing debate about how much money the city has and how it can or should be spent.

And who knows? Perhaps after my career covering public officials, I might just want to become one in retirement and a smaller ward would be easier to win.

Look for the slogan, “Vote for Rudi. He needs the money.”

Rudi Keller is news editor for the Columbia Daily Tribune. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and has covered Missouri politics since the early 1980s. He can be reached at rkeller@columbiatribune.com.