The Tale of Two Mayors
A Parable
2020
This is a story of an elected Mayor and a
hired Mayor in a small town.
Years and
years ago there was a small town that needed a municipal government to carry on
the operations apart from the county government. So they asked for a charter from the state to
become a city with a functioning body of officials elected by the citizens of
the town. The citizens formed a body
consisting of a Mayor and five city council members. The Mayor acted as the administrative part
and the council the voting part for ordinances and resolutions. Both of these positions were part time in
nature. As the city began to grow and
prosper there arose the need for someone to come along to assist the Mayor CEO
in the execution of his office. They
looked at the charter and it contained a portion that provided for just that
position. It was called the City
Administrator.
It was during two previous Mayor’s serving
that the position of City administrator was discussed and envisioned to provide
much needed assistance to that Mayor. In
the tenure of the most recent previous Mayor’s service that a person was hired
to assist the Mayor with his duties; he was only part time and the demands were
becoming greater and greater. The city
administrator was charged with general oversite of the employees of the city. The city administrator in turn answered to the
Mayor (per city charter). It was a good
thing for the city citizens with oversite and checks and balances.
Well, along comes an election with an
unexpected outcome. Up for election was
two council seats and Mayor. The two
council seated were re-elected to the incumbents to continue serving with the
other three council seats for a continuation of the five council seats
remaining intact. But what of the
Mayor’s post? As you can guess it was
won by the challenger. Now they had five
tenured council members and one new Mayor.
Mayor elect ran on the platform for less
spending, slowing traffic, and transparency in government. Mayor elect was not enamored with having a
city administrator, but could work with having an assistant as Mayor elect would
be new to this job. Do you remember the unexpected outcome? It did come and the established council and
staff and outgoing Mayor needed to do something(s). With two months left in the elected year,
some resolutions and charter changes needed to happen. The pay scale for city employees was raised
to comparative levels. The city
administrator would be re-designated as the City Manager. LOI was issued for $440,000.00 for a
park. One business needed approval for
building on a lot; variances needed to be granted. This and more needed to be done before the
swearing in of the new Mayor. What was
the result of some of these measures?
Well, now you have an elected Mayor with authority granted within the
city charter and a hired city manager with the same authority as Mayor without
voting rights. One Mayor, the elected
one, is part time, the other City Manager/Mayor is hired fulltime at $80,000.00
salary. So you have Mayor (CEO) and
Mayor (CHO) chief hired officer competing for the same authority. The most glaring problem is the CEO Mayor is
the citizens’ Mayor, the other CHO Mayor is the city council and staff Mayor.
Where do they go from here? All the business of the little city is
executed by the CHO Mayor, but ultimately needing approval by the citizen’s
Mayor. The problem is that the CHO Mayor
is hesitant to share any city business with the citizen’s Mayor. As you can imagine there is much confusion at
public meetings. It appears that the
citizen’s Mayor has not a clue as to the day to day operations of this little
city. Oh, and let’s not forget that the council, and legal team are in communications with the CHO
Mayor. Do you want to know how voting on
important matters goes? Well, that would
be all Council to ZERO on any measure the citizen’s Mayor proposes. He might ask questions, but they will come
with replies of scorn and derision; none of which will be in his favor. The citizen’s Mayor can do no good; the CHO
Mayor can do no wrong.
As you might have figured out by now, the
CITIZENS are the losers here. The
council is operating under the direction of the CHO Mayor leaving the citizen’s
Mayor on the outside looking in. But
wait, guess who has to answer to the citizens when questions arise? You guessed it, The Citizen’s Mayor.
There does not seem to be anyway out of this
dilemma. On the one hand you have a CEO
Mayor elected by the citizens which is mostly PR in the electoral process. This
Mayor is the official voice and face of the citizens and surrounding
areas. This Mayor has all the rights of
Mayor by charter. The other has been granted all the rights of CEO Mayor with
the CEO Mayor with general oversite. The
little city citizens asked the question, “What does that even mean?”. Well, what it means is the CEO Mayor is
impotent.
What should be the moral of this story?
The little city should have resorted back to
the model of Elected Mayor, Elected Council to run the business of their
city. Since the city had grown the
duties of Mayor had grown in execution.
As provided by their charter, he could have hired an assistant to assist
in the day to day duties for the city.
That assistant should have been under instruction of the Mayor not act as Mayor.
Let the
Mayor be Mayor.
