In fact, the situation is so bad, that I think we should consider alternatives to our current procedures. Is there some other way we could resolved the issues which come to arbitration, perhaps by committees of administrators?
That could work, however I suggest any such committees work by advising ArbCom, rather than making determinations themselves. Trust in ArbCom is low enough, trust in admins is much lower - I'm not sure the community would respect the decisions of admins.
The other option is to have ArbCom function as a "court of appeal" (which, I guess, makes admins magistrates). I would expect most cases to be appealed, however ArbCom could reject cases far more often than they do now if they've already been reviewed by admins.
Another idea I've seen suggested before is to significantly expand ArbCom and then select (at random) a group of arbiters for each case. This reduces the workload of individual arbiters, makes inactivity less of an issue (since inactive arbiters wouldn't be selected for cases), and gives the option of appealing to the whole of ArbCom in particularly controversial cases.