How has the strong mayor been working?
A dozen years ago, the citizens of Colorado Springs voted for a strong mayor form of government, which essentially ousted the city manager. Since then, citizens and government officials have voiced their opinions both supporting and criticizing the move.
Opinions seem split as to whether this form of government is working in the city. According to the Colorado Springs Business Journal, the ballot initiative to change the form of government came after the council made some controversial decisions that upset residents including The Stormwater Enterprise, and a “secretive deal to retain the U.S. Olympic Committee headquarters.”
But as the article reports, the change brought about some downfalls when the first strong mayor Steve Bach took office in 2011. The city council and Bach Administration started to feud right away – at that time council members spoke out against the change.
Most recently, the strong mayor form of government was questioned when the council decided to form the Law Enforcement Transparency and Advisory Committee (LETAC). As soon as the group started to meet and get feedback from the public, people spoke out against the fact that LETAC was only an advisory committee and had no direct control of policies enacted by the police department due to the strong mayor form of government.
What is a Strong Mayor Form of City Government?
An article published by Fox 21 News earlier this year, explained the difference between a “strong” and “weak” mayor in municipality governments. A strong mayor is the chief executive officer of the city and is in charge of administrative structure and removing and appointing department heads. A strong mayor also has veto power over legislation made by the council and the council does not help oversee daily operations.
A “weak” mayor is not the chief executive and they have limited or no veto power over legislation. In this form of government, the council has executive and legislative authority and it can prevent the mayor from effectively supervising city administration.
Current Council Members Comment About the Strong Mayor
After Bach ended his five-year term as the city’s first strong mayor, the current Mayor John Suthers took office in 2015, and he was reelected in 2019. Suthers’ current term ends in April 2023; he will be term-limited after serving two terms.
TMO reached out to all nine current city council members and Suthers to get their opinions of how the strong mayor form of government has been working for the last dozen years. But, only three council members responded to the request.
Councilmember Yolanda Avila said that the strong mayor form of government has shown some downfalls. “The city council that operates as the legislative body, from my perspective, has been significantly weakened,” Avila said via e-mail. “Therefore, a balance between the administration and the city council legislatures is lacking. Perhaps the charter needed to include strong legislatures along with a strong mayor.”
According to Councilmember Nancy Henjum, the strong mayor change has brought some good things to the city. “Clearly in that 12 years from the mayor’s and administration’s side, the system has had a lot of time to mature and get very strong,” Henjum said. “And I think there are a lot of positive things that have come out of that. In particular, the current mayor has been very effective in many ways. He has fixed a lot of challenges and got us to a point where we are adjusting some of our infrastructure needs very effectively. He runs a pretty tight ship with a pretty small budget.”
Henjum did say though, that there have been some issues that have come along with the change as well. “From my perspective what has not happened is that you have not matured a strong city council,” Henjum explained. “The resources that we have in terms of staff to support us on the legislative side. There are some staff and they are great, but in order to be commensurate with the strong mayor we have and the size of the city we have, to have essentially a volunteer council with very limited resources is in the long run not serving us well.”
Councilmember Tom Strand said that he has been paying attention to the city government for several years and was watching when the city voted to change from a city manager to a strong mayor.
“I think the strong mayor is more accountable to the public because it is an elected position and it is elected every four years,” Strand said. “The city manager is essentially accountable to city council, so you would think there would be less of a separation between the legislative and executive branches in the city. For the last almost eight years, I have watched Mayor Suthers run public safety like police and fire. And, he has collaborated very carefully with city council and included us in a lot of the directorates that he has like public works, IT, and HR. So, if I had to come down on one side or the other, I think the strong mayor is more accountable to the public because it is an elected position instead of an appointed position.”
Strand also said that one downfall could be that possibly the city manager has more experience leading an organization since they get appointed and reviewed by the city council. “You kind of have to take the chance that the electorate is going to pick someone that knows how to run an organization rather than it’s a beauty contest,” Strand said. “I think it has worked well with Mayor Suthers, but you have an interesting mayor that if you look at his resume, I don’t think you could ever duplicate it. He has been attorney general of the state, he has run the corrections department for the state, and the district attorney, here and he has been the U.S. attorney for the state. Clearly out of all the candidates that have been interested in running, nobody has those sort of credentials in terms of running organizations that he has.”
Springs’ residents will get the chance to elect a new strong mayor this April since Suthers will be term-limited. The filing deadline for the election is Jan. 23 and the election will occur on April 4.
Having been a participant and observer at City Hall for more than 40 years, the changes that have resulted from the Strong Mayor referendum have contributed to growing a great city. For transparency purposes, I worked on the campaign in 2010. At that time, voters were unable to hold the chief executive accountable for such things as turning off street lights or no more trash pickup in the parks. Today, they know who is ultimately responsible and they can vote for or against that person. And the outside world knows who speaks for our community, the one who got the most votes. Prior to that, our mayor could be elected with a plurality, and indeed often was. Council has the power to build a budget that can grant them more staff and more voice in committees and in issues. It has not happened yet for the same reasons legislatures always have difficulty – they speak with many voices. That is what we had with a City Manager form of government.
Colorado Springs has benefited from this form of government and the people will speak again in two months time.