Q: Why does Manhattan not have an elected mayor?
A: Timely question, since Tuesday is an election day for the City Commission. Also the school board, but your question isn’t about that.
There are two types of city governments: The “strong mayor” form, and the “council-manager” form. Manhattan’s is the latter.
In Manhattan, voters elect members of the City Commission, and then commissioners pick a mayor from among themselves for a year. That’s essentially a ceremonial position — the mayor has to show up at ribbon cuttings and go to a bunch more committee meetings. To be fair, there’s a little more power, in the sense that the mayor is involved in picking members of advisory boards and has a little more influence in tweaking the agenda for meetings.
Anyway, the person who runs the city government on a day-to-day basis is the hired professional — the city manager. The mayor and commissioners are really there only to set policy. And the mayor’s gig rotates annually.
By contrast, the “strong mayor” form means that the mayor actually runs the place day-to-day. That’s generally the system in larger cities like Kansas City, Mo. Small cities, where there’s not enough budget to pay for a manager, they generally elect the mayor directly as well.
There are, of course, hybrids, and it’s possible to have a council-manager operation but also an elected mayor. Olathe and Wichita are set up that way, for instance.
So why one way and not the other? Well, that goes back to 1951, when voters picked it. Ron Fehr, the current city manager, says the argument in favor was essentially that professional management is more competent and less political, which, in my humble opinion, is true. There was a broad movement toward professional management at that time in Kansas history so as to avoid the corruption in bigger cities, he said, and partly because KU had a city management program.
The down side, I suppose, is that an elected mayor with more day-to-day power gives voters more direct access to the person in charge.
The hybrid model would allow one mayor, even if it’s largely ceremonial, to be the face of the city for four years, rather than one, and perhaps that would have some value. On the other hand, rotating it as Manhattan does makes the gig more institutional, less dependent on a single person.
While we’re at it, Manhattan elects commissioners (and school board members, too) at-large, rather than by district. That means the whole town elects everybody, which means each commissioner and board member represents the whole community, rather than one particular area of town.
The thinking there is that it allows the city to determine overall priorities, rather than feeling the need to pump money into one area just to keep the commissioner for that district happy.
You can submit a question by e-mail to questions@themercury.com, or you can give them to the mayor, who will appoint a committee and study it, then pass it along to the commission to determine whether to give it to me or hire an out-of-town consultant.
