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Within the confines of their mandate, perhaps that’s a defensible position. Of the five realignment options they proposed, with seat counts as high as 58 and as low as 38, 44-plus-three proved the best combination of popular and not unpopular. (I would moot many fewer, but that’s politically hopeless.)

In the real world … no. Come on. “I think the last thing we need is more politicians,” Mayor John Tory has said, and he’s right.

I defy anyone to sit through a major city council meeting and tell me we have too few legislators. By my count, in the past 12 months council sat for roughly 184 hours — almost eight full days. Perhaps 30 per cent of that time was usefully spent. The rest was dedicated to point-scoring, grandstanding, bloviating in pursuit of lost causes and against faits accomplish, and demanding time-consuming electronically recorded votes on motions asking the province to be nicer to zoo animals.

As for city councillors’ other important mandate, as ombudsmen for their constituents, it’s mainly their staff who fulfill it. If it comes down to a choice, paying for more staff for Toronto’s 44 councillors is a vastly better idea than adding more councillors.

The real efficiency gains to be had at city council aren’t in the quantity of councillors, but in the system itself. Perhaps community councils should be able to decide on such monumental events as the felling of a tree or the granting of a liquor licence. Perhaps committees’ opinions should be worth more than very nearly nothing on the council floor. Perhaps there’s something useful between the weak mayor system and the strong mayor system.

In the meantime, sticking with 44 councillors and redrawing the ward boundaries to fit was one of the five options the consultants studied. Like 44-plus-three, it was one of the most popular and one of the least unpopular. And it’s a perfectly reasonable option for the executive committee and council to endorse.

• Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter: cselley