Sorry, counselor, it’s a losing argument
ATTORNEY DAVID ANDREWS MADE
the case against a city administrator to the Ad-Hoc City Administrator Study Committee last week.
His arguments, though, were unpersuasive and hopefully will not carry the day with the study committee.
Andrews’ first argument was that adding a city administrator would add an unnecessary additional layer of bureaucracy to city government.
Instead, the opposite would be the effect: adding a city administrator would streamline city government.
Right now, city operations in Plymouth are directed by a mayor and an eight-member City Council. That amounts to having nine bosses running the show, nine cooks stirring the pot, or whatever analogy you might choose — all of them far from efficient.
We’ve all heard the saying about a camel being a horse that was designed by a committee. Too often, city policies and city actions under the current setup end up more resembling a lumbering, plodding camel than a swift, energetic horse. That is not good for the city and certainly not good for the taxpayers.
Andrews also argued that many of the functions a city administrator would be expected to perform could just as easily be hired out to outside consultants, firms and contractors. That’s what the city is doing now for many things and, while it sometimes works, more often it’s just another camel of a different color. Having as many city functions as possible coordinated through one person or one office would, again, be more efficient.
Andrews claimed that it would be difficult to terminate an inept or inefficient administrator, citing state laws that protect school superintendents as well as other public employees. But city administrators are hired at-will by municipalities, are not union employees with their job protections, and can be and when necessary terminated for cause. To avoid adding such a position because legal employment protections for that person might be changed at some future date is no way to efficiently run a government in the here and now.
Andrews said that the city had an effective administrator for more than two decades in former Mayor William Kiley and suggested that making the position of mayor a full-time position might recreate that type of management.
The key word there is might. Making the mayor a full-time job doesn’t guarantee that someone with the necessary expertise knowledge would run and be elected — the pay for such a job would have to be prohibitively high to entice someone with the necessary qualifications to run the city to be a candidate. It also doesn’t ensure the kind of continuity of management that a city administrator would provide, since a mayor can easily be unelected, or an inept and inefficient but popular mayor can win re-election again and again.
Finally, Andrews made the comment that “I’m a very go-slow person when it comes to adding a position like this,” in advising against a city administrator. May we just remind him that this is the third committee to study the addition of a city administrator in Plymouth in the past two decades and that the two previous committees both overwhelming endorsed adding the position. That should be a “go-slow” enough approach for even the most cautious person among us.
At issue: City administrator Bottom line: Pros still outweigh cons
