Tale of Two Mayors

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.