Six weeks into the consultation exercise the government has embarked upon to reform the local council set-up, the parliamentary secretary responsible for the project, Chris Said, gave a press conference last Saturday to speak about some of the suggestions that have already been made.

Dr Said is currently holding meetings with all the 68 local councils – he is nearly half-way through – and will also be consulting the public in order to get feedback from the man-in-the-street about what needs to be done to improve the workings of the councils.

A common suggestion that has been made is the lengthening of the term of office from the present three years. There seems to be an agreement on this, as local councils believe that they could spread out their work and finish more projects in four or five years. Apart from this, such a change would mean that elections would not need to be held every year, reducing polarisation as well as saving money.

This newspaper has often commented on the need to increase the term of office of local councils, specifically for the reasons mentioned above. But there are other matters that need to be seen to, and these will not necessarily be mentioned by mayors and councillors, who seek to protect their interests.

For one thing, mayors should not be allowed to stay longer than two terms, and more particularly so if two terms will soon mean eight or 10 years. An amendment that could be proposed is that if a person is elected mayor for a third time, he or she could stay on as a councillor while the person obtaining the second highest number of votes of the winning party takes over as mayor. In this way, one could ensure continuity but open the way to fresher ideas.

Mayors should also not be the only ones who benefit from remuneration – councillors spend money in phone calls and car usage, just to mention two examples, and should get some form of compensation for their efforts.

While it must be made clear that having 68 councils in such a small island is perhaps already too big a number, residents of certain areas complain that local councils do not give them enough attention. There are a number of hamlets that are quite large but still too small to have their own council – Madliena, Kappara, Ibrag, Bahrija, Santa Lucija (Gozo), Bahar ic-Caghaq and Burmarrad are well-distinguished areas but they have to rely on their central local council for any work to be done.

Of course, one may argue that these areas could be big enough to field their own candidates and elect them as councillors, but with the way elections are held in Malta – with the two major political parties dominating the scenario – it is quite hard for them to do so. An idea could be to have special committees within the same council that caters for these particular zones, while the government should make sure that part of the budget allocated to the council responsible is, in fact, used in the areas in question.

The participation of political parties in local council elections is another subject that is worth considering. While such participation has its advantages, as political parties could in many ways control the behaviour of their representatives, on the other hand this could be stopping other people from giving their services at a local level simply because they do not want to be associated with local councils – and will not get anywhere if they contest as independent candidates.

Yet, it is hard to imagine the government, led by the Nationalist Party, will consider such an option. The PN was always in favour of this, whereas the Malta Labour Party had initially been against and officially took part in local council elections a few years after they were set up. Removing the possibility for political parties to take part in local councils would be doing a major u-turn which the PN will never resort to.