Saratoga Springs is a city rich in history, but the commission form of government is a tradition whose time has come and gone.
The form has all but disappeared from city governments. Yet Saratoga Springs hangs on to the commission form, the same one in place when the city was chartered in 1915. It’s like hanging on to a Model T – and still trying to drive it.
It’s time for a trade-in.
The problem with the commission government is not its age, but its set-up.
The City Council comprises five council members, each of whom is in charge of one of the city’s five departments. A council member cannot simply be a legislator. A council member must also be responsible for a specific department; finance, accounts, public safety or public works. The only lone ranger is the mayor, although the engineering department is under the auspices of the mayor’s office.
The four council members who are responsible for a department get to hire their own deputy commissioner, which is a full-time administrator, to run the office. The deputy commissioner therefore serves at the whim of the one council member responsible for that department.
No one is in charge. "Mayor" sounds important, but don’t be fooled. The Mayor of Saratoga Springs has no more power than any of the other four heads of the council monster. One head, one vote. That sounds fair, but it makes for ineffective government.
Think of your workplace with no one in charge. The supervisors are left to work things out with one another. As the "Dilbert" cartoon character has pointed out, if one department needs the cooperation of another on some matter, but the matter is not one of the other’s top 1,000 priorities, it won’t get done. At least not right away.
The only hint of accountability comes every two years at election time, when council members can take credit for what got done and blame colleagues for what got stymied.
Over the years, the volunteers and the private sector in Saratoga Springs have done more to enhance the city than has the City Council. The form of government is in part to blame.
Instead of a city run by five disparate departments, one person – be it a manager, administrator, or mayor – should be overseeing the government.
Changing the form of government should be a priority in the coming term. Mayor A.C. Dake – who is unopposed this term – has said she would pursue charter revision. She should hold fast to that commitment to bring Saratoga Springs into the 20th century, before the 21st rolls around."
There is nothing wrong with the city manager form of government, and there is nothing wrong with the commission form, either. I am sick of the propaganda from both sides. I do take issue with the nonsense from Citizen Kane, et. al., that the city manager form is somehow more modern. According to wikipedia, the first city manager was in 1908 - a mere 8 years after the first commission form. Wow, such modernization.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_manager
SUCCESS claims a change will be more expensive and less democratic. Not really.
My decision comes down to this: we have a choice between two systems that work. Why go to all the expense and effort to change from one to the other? The city council will be paralyzed for pretty much all of 2013 with transition issues if this thing passes - and will get nothing else done. Not good timing - and for what purpose? What actual real measurable gains will there be? Perhaps a few more people will run for office? Perhaps a city manager won't be as politicized?
That's why it is important for everyone that can attend, to be at the debate this Thursday night at the Saratoga High School at 7:30 sponsored by the League of Woman Voters.
DeleteFunny since they wrote that the paper has been sold 4 times, been in bankruptcy twice but the city is just doing fine
ReplyDeleteFunny, you think an Editorial is a sign of a paper's demise? Do you mean to say that all the candidates that the Editorial staff has backed all these years should be thrown out because they are in trouble now? I don't see the connection. The last quote by the Mayor at the time says it all.
DeleteWe all can think of many examples when positive changes were made only after a crisis highlighted problems that many people already knew about. Past mayors and city leaders have called for a change in our form of government for decades. It would be unfortunate to wait for a crisis to happen here.
ReplyDeleteIf cities have abandoned the commission form of government only when a crisis happened, there must have been a lot of them. The number of cities across the country using the commission form peaked around 500 in 1918. By 1984, the number had declined to 176. In 2011, there were 143. In New York, Mechanicville is the only other city using the commission form. In 2011, 3,647 cities had council-manager systems.
There are some very strong reasons for this. The Commission form of government has intrinsic to it the election of commissioners at large. The courts have found that this type of voting and specifically the commission form of government is discriminatory against minorities as the at large election of department heads dilutes the minority vote. Jacksonville Montgomery and Savanna were challenged under the voters rights act of 1965 and subsequent amendments, and dropped the commission form of government right quick.
The discriminatory attitude of the people supporting this can be seen in the name-calling and uncivil devaluing debate posted on this and other blogs. So the crisis that is coming is that the City by its form of government has huge and unknown unfunded mandates, that is the coming crisis. Vote against discrimination and vote Yes to Change.
Sounds right to me.
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I will not be posting on this site. Thanks