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1. Alternatives to
Weak Mayor Council-Manager
How to Return Executive Authority Back to
Local Municipal Mayors

2. Charter Reform Movement
 Back to the Future
 Return executive power back to city mayor. This can only
happen with the City Charter defining a new role for mayor.
 This definition of mayor’s role requires local leadership to
gain a new understanding of the consequences that a
ceremonial leader without authority has on capital
investors.
 This lack of power in an absence of a functioning
executive is a product of elite skepticism of urban
democracy leading to increased influence of special
interests.
 Progressive Era reforms eliminated the executive office of
mayor with a city council and professional city administrator.
 Our Federal and State Political Systems devalues city
governance
 These structural facts have enormous consequences on
local economic development.
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3. The Challenge
 The city’s limited authority to make effective policy
reinforces the parochialism of its leaders; this in turn,
reinforces the city’s subordinate status.
 States not cities are constitutionally protected
“local” governments.
 A strong mayor’s office is a potential instrument for
democratic self-government if it can amass power on
behalf of the city and its citizens.
 A number of cities have recently revised their “weak
mayor” municipal charters by providing veto power,
and increasing power over appointments, and in
some cases eliminating the city manager in order to
overcome the problem of accountability and closed
government.
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4. The Strong Mayor Movement
 Most citizens do not understand that their cities and their leaders
are three levels down the political food chain and depend on the
state for any power they want to exercise.
 For early 20th Century reformers the strong mayor was too
democratic; reformed-minded elites feared a municipal
government that was too responsive to urban and ethnic
masses
 Many examples of citizen voice weakening continues today
where voting districts are replaced by at-large council elections,
neighborhood councils deemphasized or eliminated altogether
for city-wide neighborhood coalitions leaving citizens wondering
who is in charge and who has specific authority to listen to their
concerns and authority to act on their concerns.
 Recent adoption of supermajority requirement for city charter
change is an obvious attempt to maintain the status quo and
keep citizen voice in check
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5. What is Driving This Reform?
 Community rank and file and engaged citizens are now
beginning to support this movement for mayor
empowerment because they see it could provide the now
missing direct accountability and transparency while
serving as a potential site for significant citizen
engagement, involvement and new political energy
 A weak or nonexistent mayor’s office means that
executive power is fragmented, either among council
members, between the council and the city manager, or
among the council and other administrative officials who
also exercise executive power.
 Many citizens just have the perception of city
governance, as attempted management by a
powerless committee, and that this ineffective
organizational structure, is outdated and in need of
serious repair (restructuring)
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6. Current Structure Dominated by
Elites?
 Some citizens see the downtown business community
and media elites as controlling the governing
process.
 Others believe the real-estate and bank’s growth
machine coalitions of land base elites, in their quest to
expand personal wealth, as the primary controlling
special interest force.
 Most political scientists accept the privileged
position of business in any growth strategy as long
as they do not undermine the common good
 More and more downtown interests that previously
favored council-manager weak mayor structure now
are significant supporters of strong mayor
reforms
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7. Many Mayors are Circumventing
Council-Manager Charters
 Many self empowering mayors are taking the
neoconservative position with emphasis on public
safety, creating a pro business climate, the
streamlining of city services, avoiding new taxes
and employing the rhetoric of competition.
 Here best practices replace policy,
entrepreneurship replaces an emphasis on
administration; managerial leadership
replaces governing.
 Michael Bloomberg calls this the managerial
mayor.
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8. Needed - A Popular Dissatisfaction
with the Status Quo
 For reform to happen necessary coalitions must
coalesce around a popular dissatisfaction with
elected officials attempting to operate within a
poor performing and inadequate government
structure lacking executive leadership.
 We have to remember that city charter reforms have
always been political instrument for meaningful
change, charters are relatively easy to amend, at the
very least in a piecemeal fashion
 The Oregon Constitution is unique among all 50
states in the delegating to local municipalities the
authority to modify and set the form of local
government without state interference
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9. Mayor - Change Agent or Guardian
of the Status Quo?
 Who comes to the mayor’s office? What offices does
the mayor visit? How does the mayor engage the
business shakers and movers? How is he featured in
the local media? Do the citizen see the mayor as
holding a full time leadership position as a change
agent representing them and doing battle for their
needs and concerns or as a guardian of the status
quo and elite interests?
 The mayor needs to be the driving force for
charter change by utilizing the Oregon Constitutional
Amendment on City Charter modification to
restructure the form of local government
necessary to meet the new challenge of interaction
and influence in the global marketplace for
recruiting capital investment and job creation.
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10. Hard Cold Fact - Mayors have Little
Influence over City’s Economic Fate
 Cities are primarily responsibility for the basic health,
safety, and welfare needs of the populace, states and
federal officials can pick and choose when and
under what circumstances to intervene
 Look at the consequences of state delegation to our
regional metro government as it relates to growth,
economic planning and regulations over the next 50
years…ouch!
 Cities have significant responsibilities without
adequate resources to meet them and most see the
obvious unfairness of this chronic condition
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11. Where will the Cities Find the
Necessary Resources?
 To address concentrated poverty, failing schools, high
crime rate. gangs, declining industrial job base, home
foreclosures, childhood hunger, homelessness, high
unemployment, returning veterans to this poor economic
environment, and all of this stresses city dwindling
finances due to increasing social services.
 Where and who are the best sources for a economic
turnaround? Could restructuring the local executive
function (the office of mayor) directly address this dilemma
of shrinking resources? What is the bottom line of city
leadership?
 No child left behind, Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, climate
change, runaway global population growth are some
examples of how prepared are we as cities to deal with
these crisis
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12. The Challenge of Mobile Capital
Investment
 The welfare of its citizens is primarily dependent
on private investment, employment, production,
as mobile capital investment and labor move back
and forth across city lines
 Cities must find new leadership models to engage
and influence inward capital flow and investment
 Cities must recognize cross-border competition and
restructure themselves to meet this new reality
 Successful companies know that when push
comes to shove and you are competing for your
very survival, you put your chief executive on a
plane who has the authority and leadership to
close the deal without subordinate barriers or
interference
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13. Mayor as Chief Executive
 Altering the existing interaction and influence
relationship between the city, state and federal
governments by modifying local city charters is
the first and maybe most powerful step in
empowering the executive role of the city mayor.
 Many who want to see the citizen community
engaged and involved in governance see the city as
the most ideal hands on site for the pursuit of the
democratic political life, especially with the inclusion
of the “on-line internet two-way communication
process” here the mayor’s office has the potential of
leading and utilizing this 21st Century tool for citizen
input and feedback.
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14. Business Unit Concept and Potential
Impact on Governance
 The executive mayor as a single official who cannot pass the
buck.
 The executive mayor interacting and influencing leadership
generating a collective feeling of ownership and belonging
successfully articulating a city’s civic identity.
 The executive mayor’s articulation of the city’s interests by a
single official is critical to cities which are experiencing today the
most significant gaps between resources and responsibilities.
 The executive mayor’s now unique position as voice of the
city is in the best position to lead charter reform and market the
concept of strong-mayor council and it’s positive benefits.
 The executive mayor will have the eyes and ears of the
investment capital community who will be much more willing to
deal and interact with the local community’s business
representative and capital and human resource leader.
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15. Mayor as “Business Unit Manager”
and “Chief Lobbyist.”
 Full time position is akin to being president of the
chamber of commerce, chief lobbyist and business
unit manager, assuming all marketing authority as
community business representative and capital
investment recruiter.
 This new functional role is similar to very successful
business unit managers found in many business
corporations today. The difference with the new
municipal mayor is invested capital rather than
profit being the new bottom line
 The mayor’s enhanced presence in the region and
global marketplace would take on major importance
as mobilizer of capital and human resources to drive
economic development
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16. Conclusion
 The Charter Review Committee recommendations could
suggest adding now many of these executive powers
incrementally to the mayor’s duties and the city voters following
an educational campaign which clearly defines the weaknesses
of the current form of government and the obvious merits of
strong mayor executive leadership would approve these charter
changes.
 Citizens are waking up to the fact that a serious governance
structural problem exist at the local level which directly affects
their current and future quality of life.
 The mayor now contends most directly with citizens
dissatisfaction with government failures even if those
failures are entirely outside his control.
 We need for the citizens and city’s common good to return
executive power back to the office of mayor.
 In every crisis there is opportunity let us not miss this one!
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