So, I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here. When I hear people talk about the Good Old Days of Council (which I experienced peripherally, having gone a couple of times), the tenor is a lot like the way people talk about Small Traditional Events. And as I have said elsewhere, STEs are great if you know people there and are in the mood to schmooze - if either of those two criteria are not met, at least *I* will eventually want to run away, at best.

If my comparison holds any water at all, the way to "fix" Council is to make sure people plan to see their friends there, and to impose some way to make people's friendships in the Barony more numerous and more tightly-knit. I'm not sure how that goes; it's a difficult question for events, and they presumably have a bigger additional draw.