You never know whether more merit would attract more people in your local board. Few years ago Croatian board got few new merit sources (after being one of the least merited boards) and it didn't really help us much when it coesm to activity as it keeps decreasing, even though we (probably) have more merit available than ever before.
That is true, but I think we lost some quality members in last few years and that affected activity and number of posts in our local board.
However, there are few new members that appeared also like SirJohn, Luno-something and few others that contribute more with quality than quantity.