It currently takes 3000 reputation to close a thread and there are only 15 people who aren't moderators who have 3000+ reputation points.
I thought the premise of the Stack sites was that they're for the people by the people. With the bar set so high, we rely on moderators making the decisions.
If we could lower this limit to 2000 points, we'd have an additional 16 people who can vote this way. If we lowered it to 1500 there would be another 7 people.
1500 points is still a very strong sigh that a user is committed to the site and remember that it would still take multiple users to close/open anything so that would cut down on abuse.