No flip-flop for Ward on city manager issue

It's funny how two people hearing the same words can come to such different conclusions about them.
In The Hartford Courant today, a story about last night's Charter Revision Commission hearing started off this way:
Democratic mayoral candidate Art Ward on Tuesday night edged closer toward supporting the proposal for a city manager form of government, a change that prompted a Republican city council candidate to proclaim that Democrats might be embracing the GOP platform.
Ward appeared to oppose the city manager proposal as recently as early this month, when he told an audience at the Federal Hill Association-sponsored mayoral debate that he'd prefer to stay with the current mayor-council form of government.
But speaking Tuesday before the charter revision commission, Ward said, "I really don't have a fixed position per se on the town manager, but I think it's time we delve into [studying] it."
I heard that, too, of course, but I didn't see any change in what Ward said. He's been saying for months that he favors leaving the mayor-council system in place but he would also like to see the panel investigate whether to have a city manager, leaving the door open to making the change.
That struck me as pretty much what he said again last night.
But both the Courant's reporter and Ken Cockayne, a Republican council contender, detected a shift in Ward's stance.
Cockayne said he was glad that Ward was coming to embrace the GOP's agenda.
Ward said today that he almost answered Cockayne at the hearing but kept his mouth shut because the hearing "was not the forum for political grandstanding."
That's kind of funny, naturally, given that Republican mayoral hopeful Ken Johnson delivered a long speech about changes he'd like to see and Ward also piped in extensively.
Mayoral candidates grandstanding? Never. ;)
Anyway, Ward said today that he hasn't changed his stance on the manager issue. He said that the questions that have been raised deserve study, but he's still in favor of retaining the mayor-council form of government.
Personally, before I would have written that Ward had shifted ground, I would have asked him directly if that was the case. The words he said at the hearing were simply too vague to underpin the Courant's story.
The other point is that Ward, whom I've been listening to for 14 years, isn't always the most eloquent speaker. He can mangle sentences with the best of them. I suppose by now I can interpret the words pretty well, but when I'm not sure what Ward means, I ask him. Normally he can translate it all back into English.

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Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com