Reporter Jackie Majerus just filed this:
A city manager – or something close to it – may be in Bristol’s future.
The city’s charter revision commission is moving toward shifting some of the mayor’s duties to a professional business manager, while still leaving the City Council and a full-time mayor in place, according to Tim Furey, who chairs the panel.
Furey said the commission has asked Ann Baldwin, an attorney for the city, to begin looking at the city charter with the idea of adding a chief operating officer or city manager.
The plan is to try to figure out “how the organizational chart would look,” said Furey.
Commissioner Harley Graham said the city has to come into the “modern age” and leave the mindset of doing things the way they’ve always been done.
“We need some professionalism,” said Graham. “We may have to redefine what the mayor does.”
Furey said the commission has given up on the idea of a total conversion to a city manager form of government, but reached something of a consensus without taking a full vote.
Instead, he said, they want to add professionalism and continuity to a system dependent on frequent municipal elections.
“People wanted some management continuity that was semi-immune from the political process,” said Furey.
But Furey said it’s also important to have a mayor who is the public face of the community.
“I like the idea of keeping a mayor in place,” said Furey. “Someone’s gotta be the king, so to speak.”
Just what responsibilities an incoming business professional would take on, who he or she would answer to and how the city could discharge that person if it wasn’t working out have yet to be determined.
“The devil is in the details,” said Furey.
Commissioner Maria Pirro said a city manager should be required to live in Bristol – something others on the panel also agreed with. By getting involved in the community, she said, that individual would “become vested” in Bristol.
Dick Prindle, a member of the commission, spoke against the city manager idea, but said he liked the notion of the mayor having an assistant.
“A mayor has a lot to do,” said Prindle.
City Councilor Craig Minor said he supported an assistant for former Mayor Gerard Couture a few years ago, “thinking I was giving the mayor a chief of staff.”
But Minor said he was disappointed when that assistant, former state Rep. Kosta Diamantis, spent all his time working on what were at the time plans for the conversion of the downtown mall into a community recreation and retail complex.
The charter revision commission will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 22 at the Bristol Board of Education.
People can address many issues that night, Furey said, including the city manager idea, but he said he hopes the hearing will be focused on the question of whether Bristol should return to an appointed school board.
After that public hearing, there will be a series of meetings to work on the charter with regard to a city manager or chief operating officer, said Furey, and more opportunities for the public to weigh in on the issue.
Any recommendation made by the charter revision commission must be approved by city councilors before it goes on the ballot.
“The electorate in the end has to decide,” said Furey.
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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
17 comments:
Bad move .How about we hold the dept. heads accountable and maybe fire a few for negledt of duty.
Either we have one or the other.
A split responsibility guarantees failure (which is probably what somepeople want).
We deserve better!
NO City MANAGER!
Another useless salary to help raise our taxes.
Simple solution ......
Hire Ellen Zoppo ( most qualified and organized canidate ) as Town Manager . Fund the position by reducing the salaries of the superficial elected positions .
results ; Bristol finally gets sober , stable , and intelligent leadership .
"Another useless salary to help raise our taxes."
Everyone who thinks the past several mayors have done a bang-up job of supervising the Chief of Police, Jonathan Rosenthal, the Water Department, etc. raise your hands.
I'm the one that said that this is another useless salary to raise our taxes. Maybe I should have been clearer.
The Mayor should not be full time at $100K a year AND have another salary for a business manager at another $100K a year.
Knock the Mayor down to part time at $25K and put the Business Manager at $90K.
If we agree that running the city is too much for a smart but still amateur mayor to do, then we should be willing to spend a bit more for the two of them (symbolic mayor and professional city manager) than we were for just the mayor. This is going to have to run to at least $125,000 plus benefits (for the manager).
Don't waste the tax payers money .Bristol has one problem,(downtown).The people that take the time to vote realize that they controll the destiny of there elected officials,whether ther dem or rep.Expand the council to 9 seats.
Here's a novel idea, why not elect a qualified mayor who has a good education and good experience to manage the city and develop ways to make it better?
Before the Ellen bashing commences (and I do agree with that poster) I want to give an eyewitness report to the fact that Ellen was in line at the Bristol Post Office this AM talking to someone about how challenging her job is and how much she loves it. City's loss, Girls Club's gain.
End of story and I for one, despite having voted for her in the primary, am willing to give Mayor Ward a chance.
Talk about city managers or other issues that might be a little dicey all make for a better mix of ideas and discussing options. No need to get personal.
If people wanted accountable dept heads then one would only have to look to see how many of them were donors to the Ward campaign to know who they thought was going to hold them accountable. And it wasn't the Zoppette.
Certainly Stortz did not get any help in trying to hold a couple of Dept Heads accoutable, at least not from the Council.
Of course Ward will never hold his dept heads accountable - he wants everyone to like him. Sounds like deep seated insecurity on his part. Ellen is a professional who realizes that all people need to be held accountable. She would have made changes. Ward will not make waves with anyone at city hall. The buzz there now is that those who worked on Wards campaign are now big shots at city hall and are getting away with murder. Their coworkers are getting sick and tired of it. Ahh - politics.
We are a city of 60,000 plus. The proposal to have a part-time mayor is ludicrous. The city needs an active mayor and needs to work harder at marketing all that Bristol has to offer even if it means adding new positions.
I am sick of hearing everyone bash our city. We have many positive things to be proud of for a community of our size and the diverse group citizens that make up our city.
The concept of a business manager for the city is worth investigating. If well thought out the position could save more money than it costs in salary and possibly lead to the restructuring of some departments eliminating redundancies.
All options should be explored as times are changing and structures need to change with them.
A town manager now there's discussion for a C.f.o give me a break ,Furrey stick to whay you do, making a nightmare out of this issue, that is not going anywhere.
January 17, 2008 10:04 PM:
Who's bashing our city? It's a hell of a lot better than say...East Hartford.
Why is this proposal even on the table? Where is the example for the need? The departments seem to run OK. The parks get fixed. The cops do thier jobs well. The firemen do there's well also. The education system seems really good for a traditionally blue-collar city.
Where's the problem? I think this is all political hyperbole.
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