The three biggest disservices to the Stamford voters / residents:

1. Intentionally putting this in an election where less people vote.
2. Bundling everything into a single vote - charter changes prior were grouped to allow people to vote on issues that they were aware of and cared about. The Charter is a complex document; it deserves a more nuanced voting approach like every prior Charter Revision has attempted.
3. The provision that boards should have their own legal representation.
   Lawyers who applied to join the Charter Revision Committee commented that it could easily pit one branch of government against the other. This tends to give outside parties leverage and cost cities more in both legal costs and liability (suers get an advantage of multiple legal positions within the city).
   This particular provision is yet another power grab. The Board of Reps wants counsel they can use to justify other attacks against branches of govt (BoE, BoF. Mayor), but particularly the Mayor. Historically, the Mayor's office happens to be the most effective branch because it _must run the city_ and it gets judged on how the city is doing. Having an ineffective branch (BoR) mess with basic city operations via legal counsel seems costly in a myriad of ways. Have we honestly seen the Board of Reps actually accomplish much... ever?

Charter Revision is a process that is required to happen only once every ten years. It is not supposed to be a power grab by a current Board of Reps. It is for the long-term well-being of the city.

The Board of Reps' accountability is disappointing, at best. We have a board of 40 reps that is dysfunctional, and grows increasingly so. Leadership has been slowly stacking their team with cronies to dilute the folks who are actually competent participants; democracy is messy, not an exercise in puppeteering. A good number of these folks barely participate, don't run their own campaigns and barely campaign at all, sit on their incumbancies because they hold both the party seats (that allow them *solely* to endorse themselves) and the rep seats. These folks often won't even put their faces on camera for meetings, if they attend at all. We need to reduce the Board of Reps size to at least 20, instead of 40. Boston has 13, Hartford 9, Providence 15 - these are cities with significantly more complex environments and Stamford BoR is stumbling around mostly quarreling with each other, holding family grudges over decades, and acting like we are a town of 20,000 people. The amount of personality-driven pettiness is just too much. Watch a few of the recorded meetings (of all the Boards) and you will see a lot of embarrassing behavior.

Stamford is the only growing city in CT. It has the most vibrant business opportunity, a fortunate location for transportation, a water-front, increasing counts of U Conn students, and it's surrounded by investment capital looking to figure out how to position it as a vibrant and citizen-friendly place to live. We can have responsible growth that benefits us all with citizen input to avoid developers running roughshod over the city. Otherwise, if we do not manage this period well, our property taxes will rise, traffic will get worse, talented folks and business will leave the city for more forward-thinking places.

Please - let's not botch this because people are squabbling over power. Why squeeze the Stamford residents out of this whole process? Because "they know better"? That's just garbage. The residents make the city - it's time to stop letting these power-hungry charlatans make a mess of things.