A New City Manager Needed?

Bill Knight weighs in with a post indicating why he thinks a new City Manager is needed in Greensboro.

Comments

[Billy The Blogging Poet]

At least we agree on some things. ;-)

[Joe Guarino]

Billy, I think we have unexpectedly found a number of areas in which we agree.:)

But I think that Bill's point that the city attorney's office needs some attention is a quite valid one also. That office has been a very costly mess.

[big tuna]

Oh, great. Now someone wants to upset the city's divisiveness status quo. Just when I was getting used to it!

[Brenda Bowers]

1) The City Council needs to take control and make several changes. Among them are firing Johnson with the same consideration he gave David Wray which of course will never happen. No, the SOB will get a big pot of tax payer goodwill money and a great recommendation.

2) they need to get the City Manager out of the City Council and in the cheap seats where he belongs.

3) they need to put the entire Legal Department and the Police Department directly under the control of the City Council. Both departments are to be available to "advise" the City Manager in areas where they can help with city management.

4) for good measure, although I don't see this happening either, they should put all department heads directly under the control of the City Council. Department Heads are to take direction from the City Manager on a day to day basis, but when there is a dispute they have the right to come to the City Council for advice. And the City Manager can not fire department heads. If there is a dispute serious enough to need addressed by someone leaving then the City Manager must bring his case to the City Council.

5) Last, they should rehire David Wray and give him total control to clean up the GPD. The Black officers will scream and charge racism and the FBI will come in and investigate. I frankly think that all law suits against Wray would go away if all of the facts were allowed to come out and the blame for all that has happened is place on Mitch Johnson and Linda Miles. Then the city will just have to deal with the suits against those two. With any luck the police officers who were harmed by Miles and Johnson will drop their suits if they get their jobs and reputations back. BB

[Joe Guarino]

Big Tuna, I would not worry. I know you jest, but fixing the entire system is going to take a while.

Brenda, you have an ambitious plan. But then again, there appear to be many wrongs to correct.

[Bill Knight]

It would be a serious mistkae for individual department heads to report directly to the City Council. Under our form of city government department heads should report directly to the city manager. City council members are elected part-time officials with insufficient knowledge of departmental operations to make decisions at that level. This is the manager's job. I have already addressed the need for a new city manager who has the full faith and confidence of the general public and city employees.

[Brenda Bowers]

Mr. Knight I suggested department heads under the City Council but taking directions from the City Manager on a daily basis. We saw at least two instances (recorded instances by Ben Holder, also documents that were changed) where the department head was apparently forced to lie for the City Manager. Or, rather take blame for action initiated by the City Manager. With the City Manager as their boss they have no recourse available if this sort of pressure is applied.

I certainly hope after the past two years you don't feel the same way about the Police Chief and the Legal Department. The Police Chief especially must be a highly trained individual in law enforcement and needs to operate with total autonomy
from any persons but our elected officials. That is unless it is the better course of making Police Chief an elective office where the person elected can be readily thrown out of office.

There is entirely too much power put in the hands of someone no one elected. This person was not screened by the tax payers and yet he/she controls the entire city and every employee. He/she also controls what the City Council is told by department heads. Too much power corrupts as we have seen.

I would be happy to hear your views on what I have said. Your statement above does not answer my concerns it merely tells me how things are, and as witnessed this past two years or more the status quo is broken.

If you care to you might come to my blog where I have made this same argument on today's post or I will be happy to come back to your site. Brenda Bowers

[Brenda Bowers]

Joe there needs to be a clean sweep and I believe we now have four city council members who are willing to take these steps. The steps I propose would put more power in the hands of the city council. Mike Barber was actually flabbergasted when he found he could not demand an answer from the Legal Department attorney. So while the opportunity is here why not have bloggers and individuals who agree that the City Manager has too much power press the City Council to take some of it away. It certainly would not harm the day to day operation of the city one bit. And best of all it only takes an e-mail on a site the city has provided. Brenda

[Bubba]

Is it time for Greensboro to consider moving away from the City council/City Manager form of government to a Strong Mayor program, as described here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_United_States#Local_government

Excerpt:

"Mayor-Council.

This is the oldest form of city government in the United States and, until the beginning of the 20th century, was used by nearly all American cities. Its structure is similar to that of the state and national governments, with an elected mayor as chief of the executive branch and an elected council that represents the various neighborhoods forming the legislative branch.

*****The mayor appoints heads of city departments and other officials, sometimes with the approval of the council. He or she has the power of veto over ordinances — the laws of the city — and frequently is responsible for preparing the city's budget.*****

The council passes city ordinances, sets the tax rate on property, and apportions money among the various city departments.

As cities have grown, council seats have usually come to represent more than a single neighborhood."

This is what we have now:

"Council-Manager.

The city manager is a response to the increasing complexity of urban problems, which require management expertise not often possessed by elected public officials. The answer has been to entrust most of the executive powers, including law enforcement and provision of services, to a highly trained and experienced professional city manager.

The city manager plan has been adopted by a growing number of cities. Under this plan, a small, elected council makes the city ordinances and sets policy, but hires a paid administrator, also called a city manager, to carry out its decisions. The manager draws up the city budget and supervises most of the departments. Usually, there is no set term;

***** the manager serves as long as the council is satisfied with his or her work.*****"

It's time we stopped "entrust(ing) most of the executive powers, including law enforcement and provision of services" to our supposedly "highly trained and experienced professional city manager."

It's clearly time for a change.

[Joe Guarino]

Bill, Brenda, Bubba, you might have noticed this morning's editorial which floated the idea, previously discussed, that Mitchell Johnson should be given objective performance criteria against which he can be assessed.

That makes it all very easy. Just cross the "t's" and dot the "i's" explicitly prescribed, and you cannot be held accountable for raw, wrongheaded, political decisions.

It seems to me that when inappropriate decisions of this type are made, the city manager has effectively made his own bed; and it is inevitable that he will have to lie in it.

[Jonathan Jones]

Bubba,

While the strong mayor form of government might be appealing, actually getting it in Greensboro is probably unrealistic.

The General Assembly has laid out two forms of government for municipalities: the council-manager form that Greensboro uses and a mayor-council form in which the council as a whole makes the administrative decisions.

I believe you'd have to get the General Assembly to authorize a strong mayor form, and I just don't see that happening.

[Bubba]

"The General Assembly has laid out two forms of government for municipalities: the council-manager form that Greensboro uses and a mayor-council form in which the council as a whole makes the administrative decisions."

I was not aware of that being the case. Can you give me a citation?

[Bubba]

"It seems to me that when inappropriate decisions of this type are made, the city manager has effectively made his own bed; and it is inevitable that he will have to lie in it."

.....which should obviously result in us telling the incumbent to hit the road.

I doubt if our City Council as a whole has the will to take this necessary step.

[Jonathan Jones]

N.C.G.S 160A, Articles 5 & 7

[Bubba]

Then perhaps we should think about the mayor/council system as being in our city's best interests.

The current system is obviously not doing what it was intended to do, in large part because of our current city manager.

[Tony Wilkins]

I agree with Bill Knight that a new city manager is needed. I think we can all agree the city has been under constant chaos since Mitchell Johnson took the position and I don't believe we just entered the Twilight Zone the day after Ed Kitchen retired.
There certainly can still be inside information that we do not have but from the outside looking in it appears the new gullible, naive, and inexperienced city manager was used as a pawn to remove David Wray as he was getting closer to exposing corruption in the GPD. No evidence of Wray's white hood ever surfaced.
Probably a 5-4 vote to keep him right now which means he better keep those five friends happy.
I do not believe we can move ahead as a city under Johnson's management while so many questions linger about his actions.
Joe, Bubba, Bill, and Brenda I hope you enjoy this beautiful New Year's Day 2008. Let's hope it's the last New Year's Day that we post about Mitchell Johnson.

[Joe Guarino]

Tony (and the rest), Happy New Year to you also.

Clearly, this is not going away. A screw-up of this magnitude, as we saw in the case of the GPD fiasco, simply can't be ignored. Now we have an allegation of a sexual assault among police officers; a burgeoning crime wave with a police department seemingly powerless to stop it; and an incipient (but dubious) effort at reviewing the police department from the outside. And there are so many other circumstances that are too numerous to mention.

[wayne stutts]

How can we heal as a city with Mitchell Johnson as Manager? Even those who defend him MUST see that he is so damaged, so strongly disliked and so weak that for him to stay will only keep all this mistrust alive. It' past time for himto go.

[wayne stutts]

I watched Channel 8 Public Television last night. Keith Holliday was the guest. It was sickening to listen to him; He listed all of his accomplishments as mayor. He is so out of touch with most of us. He really believes our Police Department is doing fine. Has he called for policeman lately? He is the biggest disgrace as a mayor, EVER. thank God he's gone

[Joe Guarino]

Wayne, I have to agree about Holliday. Aside from FedEx, his legacy is awful. And it was crowned during his final days with the horrendous deal-- which came from completely out of the blue-- in which money designated for low-income housing was instead diverted to the civil rights museum.

This, of course, raised questions as to whether it might have been somehow related to endorsements the Simkins machine made in November. We do not know, but the timing seemed curious.

[Roch101]

"Aside from FedEx, his legacy is awful."

Aside from the fact that we haven't yet had the opportunity to evaluate the impacts, good or bad, of FedEx, did the mayor do anything other than applaud the decisions of others when it came to recruiting FedEx?

[Joe Guarino]

Roch, my recollection is that he actively promoted it; and that it was permitted to happen (and perhaps facilitated) by the city on his watch. But correct me if I am wrong.

[Roger Greene]

Let's not forget Holliday also oversaw the clandestine purchase of a hockey team by the city. They tried to hide that act. There's a whole laundry list of shady acts and outright failures he is associated with.

As far as department heads answering directly to the council, I don't see that as practical or desirable. I would like to see the department heads have the right of appeal to the council if they're fired. The police department has an appeal process and it's happened that the city manager has overridden a firing by the chief. I think that ought to be available to department heads. This is part of the process that has kept Hinson and others employeed. It can be politicized easily.

On the suggestion that the taxpayers screen more of our city official, I'd wait until they've done a better job of screening elected council members first.

[Joe Guarino]

Roger, I did not mean to minimize the amount of unethical action taken under Holliday's watch. We cannot forget, of course, Project Homestead, or the offering of domestic partner benefits without a council vote, or the White Street Landfill. I suppose there are probably other examples we could cite as well.

[Roch101]

"Roch, my recollection is that he actively promoted it; and that it was permitted to happen (and perhaps facilitated) by the city on his watch. But correct me if I am wrong."

Yes, a lot of people promoted it. The city had no hand in permitting it. The council did vote to extend a sewer line at no cost. Does that qualify as the mayor's legacy?

[Joe Guarino]

Roch, no, it does not qualify as his sole legacy. His legacy also must include the GPD fiasco, Project Homestead, the White Street Landfill and avoiding a council vote on domestic partner benefits.:)

[Roger Greene]

"Roch, my recollection is that he actively promoted it; and that it was permitted to happen (and perhaps facilitated) by the city on his watch. But correct me if I am wrong."

Rest assured you'll never see an article in the News and Neglector entitled 'Keith Holliday a Mixed Legacy'.

[Bubba]

"Rest assured you'll never see an article in the News and Neglector entitled 'Keith Holliday a Mixed Legacy'."

Just like you'll never see this headline over a N&R editorial: "Truth and Reconciliation Process: Just Get Over It".