Agenda - Charter Commission - 04/21/2005

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Implementing alternative service-delivery mechanisms, including contracting, volunteerism, franchising, and privatization. Developing the council-manager system of organizing and operating local government. Of the reforms, the development of the council-manager system may have been the most significant step in improving the performance and credibility of local government. The Flexible System The council-manager form continues to prove its adaptability. The system's developers originally conceived elected councils as consisting of only five to seven members, elected at large on a m~npartisan basis. The council would select one member to serve as mayor. Initially, elected councilmembers received little or no compensation for what was viewed as volunteer service to the community, Data collected by ICMA in 1996'show that coUncil-manager communities in the United State:s elect an average of six councilmembers;.however, councils consisting of 12 to 13 members have become increasingly common among larger jur/sdictions. Often, some or ali councilmembers arc: elected to represent a particular section of the community. Seventeen percent of council-manager communities nominated and elected council members by ward or district; an additional 18.5 percent used a combination of at-large and by- district elections. Seventeen percent of responding council-manager communities also held partisan elections. To fulfill development needs in public works and capital infrastructure, local governments initially recruited managers with engineering backgounds or undergraduate degrees. In the book The Risc of'the City Manager, author Richard Stillman reported that in 1934 77 percent of responding managers with college degrees had majored in eng/neering and that 51 percent listed a bachelor's degree as their highest level of educational attainment. According to information in Stillman's book and J_n ICMA's 1996 Municipal Year Book, appointed managers often are trained in the general management field of public administration, and the proportion of managers with a graduate or professional degree has risen steadily, from 27 percent in 1971 to nearly 73 percent in 1995. A manager's course of study may include such diverse topics as public finance, resource allocation, economic development, technology, intergovernmental relations, planning, public policy, and environmental and human resource management. Level and type of education have not been the only changes among appointed local gov'emment managers. In 1971, researchers reported that virtually all city managers surveyed were white and male. The 1996 Municipal Year Book directories indicated, however, that by 1995 12 perc[znt of reporting managers were women and that an increasing number of minorities had joined the p~'o ['ession. 3 -45-