Is It Time For a City Manager?
The Caldwell Guardian recently raised this question in relation to governance in Canyon County.
Staunton, Virginia is the Birthplace of the Council / Manager form of governance. Created in 1908 during the Progressive Era to remove city government from the machinations of politics, and place management of the city into the hands of a trained, accredited executive who would remain neutral to city politics.
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Before an unexpected death forced yours truly to drop out of the race (all the time cognizant of my "Snowball's Chance in Hell"), my erstwhile campaign for Mayor of Boise had two main components to its platform.
* Upon election, my first order of business would have been to "demote" myself and transform the Mayor's Office into a far less expensive ceremonial office and switch to a professional, accredited City Manager form of government, and;
* What I dubbed: "Enthusiastic Plagiarism". Very few - if any - of the problems faced here in Idaho are unique to Idaho and have long since been successfully addressed by other communities across America and around the world. Whether we're talking about schools, roads or sewer systems. Abandoning what I view as a nearly insatiable desire to constantly reinvent the wheel, I would have co-opted, and where possible improved upon, proven ethical solutions.
The "enemies" of the City Manager approach are rarely the Mayor's themselves as much as the City Council's and entrenched special interests in a given community who stand to lose their power and influence when forced into a paradigm of greater accountability and logical thinking.
For more information about City Manager governance, visit the International City / County Management Association and / or the Wikipedia entry.
Original post with links available @ http://theboisepicayune.blogspot.com/2008/08/time-for-city-manager.html
NO.
Absolutely!
Boise has grown too big to pretend this is still Mayberry. There are too many factions and too many different issues at stake. Not to mention, if there had been a City Manager, the Brent Coles incident would not have happened.
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The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.
---James Madison, 1803---
Does Portland have a manager?
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If this had been an actual troll post the attention seeking you just read would've been followed by screaming, name-calling and cutting and pasting for no apparent reason. We now return you to the Idaho Statesman already in progress.
City managers are for small towns!
Large cities aren't supposed to be run by one man and that is why DEPARTMENTS are so important to how a city functions. It's like you expected Bush to be in charge of the entire dealings of the USA. That's dangerously short-sighted thinking.
The Mayor is the administrator or the city, not the mommy. If you want more refinement via the Mayor put them on a 'leash' with a shorter term. most want the administrative process to be more stable and give them a longer term. Usually the mayor is the lead member of the City Council whether there is a manager or not.
The mayor is always subject to the legally instituted processes of RECALL and it takes more than grumbling to accomplish that though which is more or less equivalent to a check and balance that prohibits the actions of a malicious few from subverting our political freedom of choice by majority.
Okay kids, let's summarize. We have checks and balances to thwart perversion of the people's choices from the outside. To add to that there are CRIMINAL and ETHICAL checks and PENALTIES OF LAW to thwart internal perversion of government. If you want to CHANGE this you will STILL have to use the existing systems or have the JUDICIARY aspects of government overturn existing laws.
How do you effect change? Not among a few posters here. Go forth and propose, folks.
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If this had been an actual troll post the attention seeking you just read would've been followed by screaming, name-calling and cutting and pasting for no apparent reason. We now return you to the Idaho Statesman already in progress.
I thought this Guardian was a Boise thing...the dude move?
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If this had been an actual troll post the attention seeking you just read would've been followed by screaming, name-calling and cutting and pasting for no apparent reason. We now return you to the Idaho Statesman already in progress.