Let's not fool ourselves. The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT. They stopped listening to you a long time ago. Our city leaders define the narratives, then dictate THEIR priorities and prescriptions to the problems that, ironically, were created by their own poor policy choices and program mismanagement (an infinite "doom loop"). It's like asking a poor carpenter to fix his own mistakes. By monopolizing the narratives AND the platforms (i.e. a toothless press, rampant social media (Nextdoor) censorship, a captured city council agenda, antiquated and cumbersome (by design) communication tools for the electorate) that steer their policy messages, our leaders advance their OWN agendas and those of the local ruling class with few avenues for any effective resident pushback (think "clock tower" development). We're constantly playing defense just to protect our individual rights, our property rights, our bank accounts, our culture, our safety, our children and our futures from their ever-creeping encroachments. Our local political system has become bogged down, overly-intrusive, dysfunctional and no longer works for the ordinary person. Beneath its surface lies an intolerant ideological dogma that makes life exceedingly more difficult and monocultural. In today’s representative democracy, local leadership is convinced that only government knows what’s best for the people, so asking the electorate what it thinks is only a waste of their time and yours. Pardon me! I believe that THE PEOPLE are best positioned to know what's best for THE PEOPLE, if that makes sense. WE THE PEOPLE must start steering THEM toward OUR shared vision (i.e. the "Public Will") as they have lost complete sight of it, but that is impossible without a ground-breaking paradigm shift (next section).