Agenda - Charter Commission - 01/08/2002 - Memorandum

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:talent so that even the smallest c~t!es with the councibmanager plan should have no difficulty in getting qualified applicants when a vacancy in the position occurs. Actually, the city manager move- ment has called into public service a large number of persons of a class to which the older forms of city government never made the slightest appeal. The average person who wants to be a councilman or mayor under a council and mayor or a federal plan of city government, or a commissioner in a commission plan, has little or no training in admin- istration, and on the other hand in every large city and in many small ones there are men who never will run for elective office who have both the ability and the training fitting them for city managership. .¥iayors and councilmen elected by the people are the onesbest fitted to determine municipal policies, to enact local ordinances, and to order public works, but we need to call out the other type of ability to do the actual work of administration in the most workmanlike and businesslike way. The manager plan does this. Fifth, it is also said that there is nothing to guar- antee that the council will appoint a manager with- otlt regard to politics, nor to assure the people that the manager will not appoint politicians to office at the behest of the council. The first point here is absolutely true. The manager plan is not automatic. ]t is neither fool-proof nor politician-p~oof. If the people elect a council which is willing to sacrifice efficiency and the public good to purely political ends, there is nothing to protect the city against this sort of thing. The government will probably become just as bad as the voters deserve. A mane- ger appointed without regard to politics, however, is not likely to fill the offices under him with in- competents. The manager hag a reputation.to make if he expects to succeed in his profession. He cannot afford to put unfit men into office, since it will en- danger the success of his administration. 109. Conclusions as to these forms. During the two centuries since the Revolutionary War the pep- ple of the United States have made more experi- ments in the organization of city governments than any other people in the world. Our' cities passed from a simple uniform plan of organization into a variety of complex schemes in which there were more elective officers, boards, and departments than could then be found in any other cities in the world. Always the thought was that these changes would give the voters more control~ In fact there was too much machine;y, too much complexity, too much loss of energy, in the operation of our city governments. Only the bosses and party mana- gers knew how to operate them~ When finally the people aroused themselves to see what was wrong, there began a return to simplicity in the forms of municipal government. The commission plan and the council-manager plan have found t;avor in hun- dreds of ci't(es because they have made popular control over city government more effective. Indeed, speaking b;oad'ly, it may be said that the; nineteenth century settled the principle that the people, acting a's voters, must have full control over their city and other governments. It is the task of the twentieth century to make democracy effici- ent, - to find forms of government under which popular control will be a reality and through which the people can .get expert, efficient service to the full value of every dollar expended. The council- manager plan is the latest, the simplest, and seems to be the most promising plan for combining democratic control of policies with expert adminis- tration. - Special Problems of Organization '110. 'The school system: independent, or a. branch of the city government? This has become largely an academic question in Minnesota. Either under general laws or under special laws of long standing, school affair's are handled in special school districts under elective boards of education rathor than being integrated in whole or in part into city government, as in some cities elsewhere in the country~ The areas and boundaries of school districts do not usually-correspond exactly with those of the city, but even in the few instances where the boundaries of city and school districts coincid% it has become un-iversat practice to separ- ate the schools from city government. At one time the education function in St..Paul was handled by a separate department under the city's commission plan Charter, a plan sanctioned by the Minnesota Supreme Court,12 but schools in that city are now handled by a special school district. In only a very few cases is there even a partial financial control by the cities over the schools, 111. The problem of separate boards. -Almost every mayor and council city in Minnesota has cer-. rain boards and commissions.. Armory boards, which handle state rather than municipal affairs,.are pro- vided for by statute and it is almost certainly out- side of the power of cities to change them. Health boards are also provided for by general Jaws, but 12State ex rel. Smtthv. City of St, Pautl ~128 Minn, 82 150 N,W. 389 (1914). -7-