re: What does a city councilman actually do?

You must live in Loupe's district. I've noticed the same thing.

I thought about this the other day: how can anyone with a traditional job serve as a council member? The meetings start at 3:30 to 4:00PM in Baton Rouge and occur twice a month. Maybe that's part of the reason we get what we have in office.

They start at 4 and are 2x a month. If you can’t cut out of your job at 3:30 twice a month or have enough vacation time to do so, you probably aren’t best suited for the Metro Council.

I work closely with the ones in my city. Basically they are the ones that decide on "major"-ish issues affecting the city and vote on things. No it's not just about trash pickup. Many of the issues ours vote on deal with land development and deciding on whether certain companies can build in our city. Technically each one represents their district within our city (they are voted by the public) but for the most post it is more large scale and city-centric rather than their district. They vote on contracts different departments in the city present. We have 2 council meetings a month, preceeded that same day by work sessions. They work very closely with the mayor.

It is "part time" in that they have other jobs but there's a good bit of time involved. Most of the time people just bitch at them and complain about stuff, it doesn't seem like a very cool job to me.

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Like what kind of problems? Trash pickup issues?

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They get calls from people about all kinds of stuff, but yeah trash pickup is one. If people's trash isn't getting picked up they are calling their councilman.

Other reasons people call their councilman are:

Abundant properties
Sewage
Drainage
Traffic

Then they get calls about other things they really can't do much about.. Like people looking for jobs, people complaining about something their neighbor does, that they legally have the right to do, but for some reason those people think the city councilman can just go over and make them do whatever it is the person is complaining about.

Are they really getting bribes?

Blow and two chicks at the same time.