Seattle is an amazing place. Set in a breathtaking natural environment, the city has developed into one of the most attractive and vibrant places in America. However, if you ask many residents, they will be quick to point out many issues with their hometown. Severely congested highways, a housing shortage, a large homeless population, unaddressed mental health concerns frequently top the list. While Sound Transit is building a world-class light rail system, the cost and slow progress in completing the system is a familiar lament. Because it took Seattle decades to gain voter approval to build the system, the costs are many times what they would have been.
It can be argued that the time it took for voters to approve moving forward is, at least in part, due to a lack of confidence they have in their government. This lack of confidence also contributes to the frequent turnover in mayors and council members. The pendulum swing from moderate to progressive and back again exacerbates the constant churn in elected officials. While a mayor may be making progress to address issues, the typical four-year tenure often halts that progress as a new mayor brings in their own team that virtually starts from scratch.
As challenging as this is, a more fundamental problem makes the current city governance unworkable. We elect mayors to be the chief executive of the city. Yet, there are no qualifications for anyone running to serve as the administrative head of a city with about 14,000 employees and a budget of about $9 billion. Can you imagine the head of a similarly sized private business appointing a CEO with no qualifications to run the company? How long would it be before the company filed for bankruptcy?
Making matters worse, when a new mayor comes into office, they generally bring with them people who helped them get elected. These people are often given fairly high-level positions for which they have no real qualifications. To the winner go the spoils.
Seattle deserves better than this. This should not be the way we do business, and it doesn’t have to be. About half of the cities in this country have a council-manager form of government, where an elected mayor and city council appoint a professional manager to run the government. The council serves as the legislative branch, adopting ordinances governing the city as well as setting the annual budget and policies for the city. The city manager, much like a corporate CEO, carries out the direction of the mayor and council and manages day-to-day operations. The manager is responsible for the hiring of all staff. Those decisions are made on the basis of qualifications and don’t change because a new mayor is elected. The role of the mayor is to preside over the council and be an official representative of the city.
There are many examples of how well this works throughout the country. However, we can just look across Lake Washington and see how Bellevue works. We can also look south to Portland, where the mandated Charter Review Commission realized that hiring a professional manager was better than electing people to serve in an administrative role. The city has adopted a modified version that includes a professional administrator. A large city that uses the city manager form is Phoenix.
We deserve a city that gives us a competent and exemplary government led by professionals trained to manage a large, complex metropolis. This is essential to help citizens develop confidence in their city. Seattle has major issues to address, and a new form of governance is the best way for us to be successful.
