Administrative reform: Number of local council members to drop by a third
In the course of the ongoing administrative reform, the number of elected local council members is set to drop from the current 3,000 to around 2,000.
According to the Ministry of Finance, some 75 to 80 local councils will be left after the implementation of the Administrative Reform Act. This also means that the number of elected local councils will shrink, and with it there will be fewer representatives to elect, daily Postimees wrote on Thursday.
In Saaremaa alone, the number of council members will drop by one hundred. Where there are currently 127 members of different local councils across the island, after the merger of the island’s municipalities into a single administrative unit only some 31 people will need to be elected to the new council.
Apart from the number of council members for the newly created municipalities, merger agreements also include the number of future election districts as well as the frequency of elections. The next local elections are set for autumn 2017, which means that the municipalities, cities, and city districts only have a few months left to set up the framework necessary for them to take place.
Editor: Editor: Dario Cavegn