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There are a number of ways it can be done. <br /> To begin with we werevery interested in the possibility of <br /> going to a county-manager form of government as opposed to <br /> an elected mayor. At first glance this looked very attractive. <br /> We got--through the help of Councilman Dahlberg--we obtained <br /> the statutes of eight states permitting county and city-manager <br /> forms of government. We looked at 6 county charters and we <br /> found that they all had a couple of things in common. One was <br /> that they specified a person to have qualifications to be the <br /> county manager that sounded very, very good on paper. But the <br /> more we talked to people, and we talked to several people who <br /> had had experience, actual experience of the manager form of <br /> government--that it is very difficult to find people with the <br /> experience level that is specified who are acceptable to the <br /> people of a city or a county and who are adaptable to come in <br /> from the outside and take over. We found that as the people <br /> stayed on as manager they tended to get into the empire building <br /> business and it was very difficult to control . So our final <br /> decision , having looked at it quite carefully .,,and in effect <br /> reversing the opinions of a great many of _purmembers--the <br /> committee unanimously decided we would, do much he'tter_t'o <br /> Improve the presentcouncil-mayor form of government which we <br /> presently have rather than start on a new form with all the. <br /> attendant growing pains. In other words, we really said we <br /> believe, in general , in evolution--building on what we have <br /> rather than tearing down what we have and starting all over <br /> again. <br /> Well , now how do we change the council-mayor <br /> relationship to tend to put the people back in the loop, and <br /> number one, we felt that the County Council needs considerably <br /> more staff help than they have had in the past. I think this <br /> has been proposed to you by several other people and so far I <br /> haven ' t heard any opposition to that fact so I won ' t really <br /> dwell on it. But I might note that of all the councilmembers <br /> who havecome and talked to us , I think this has been unanimous <br /> among them that they feel the need of staff people who can go <br /> back and answer questions run things down for them' give them <br /> digests on complicated issues and in roth`ewords, give them good <br /> bases for sounddecisions rather than just taking department <br /> heads ' words , or the Mayor' s words , as gospel truth. Number <br /> two, we also feel , and I think this is again agreed with by <br /> practically everybody, that the council should have its own <br /> legal counsel rather than depending on the corporation counsel . <br /> He is really the representative of the county and the Mayor <br /> rather than the côuncil , and , 'number two, we felt that we should <br /> strengthen the council by giving it the approval or disapproval <br /> of all department head nominations. Today only two are subject <br /> to' council approval; -the corporation counsel. and .the planning <br /> director® The other members of the Mayor ' s department heads <br /> and his staff, we think , should be approved by the council just <br /> the same as the corporation counsel and the planning -director. <br /> Number three, . and this is not a big point, but we've heard quite <br /> a bit of criticism of the Mayor' s moving money around from one <br /> account to another, so that though the council has appropriated <br /> for one thing it winds up doing something else® Section 10-9 <br /> of the charter is pretty unclear as to where the Mayor' s powers <br /> - 3 <br />