If the Amherst Charter Commission decides to move to replace Town Meeting with a city council, I believe the town should maintain the strong manager form of government. A mayor is not best for Amherst.
I come to this conclusion because I care about the town, having worked as the town’s finance director for five years, and also based on my experiences working as the chief administrative officer in the city of Newton, which has a council/mayor form of government.
It is important that the leadership of a community works together to achieve goals. A council that hires a manager has every reason to see that manager succeed. The interests of the council and the manager interests in the town’s success align.
While this may be true with a mayor, in a council/mayor form of government there all too often is institutional competition between councilors and the mayor. Some councilors want to replace the current mayor, whoever it is. Others feel it is important to assert the council’s independence.
I saw this in Newton where several aldermen clearly wanted to be mayor and would create situations to promote themselves instead of promoting the city’s best interests. These instances of the separation of the interests of the mayor and key aldermen made collective bargaining harder, confused and distorted the difficult issues surrounding building a new high school, and created unnecessary tensions in other areas.
There are just too many instances when the interests of mayor and councilors are at odds with each other. And although it is not necessarily the case that relations will be competitive between them, when they are, the results are poisonous.
The day-to-day management of the town should be guided by professional standards, not political considerations. There are detailed and difficult decisions a town leader must make to ensure a town runs smoothly. The vast majority of them should be made with regard to what is best for the town and its citizens. They should be made using principles of good management, such as building a cohesive team of department heads and staff, outlining long-term goals and their relationships to everyday work, setting standards and measuring results.
No one person makes a town successful. Having good staff is essential, and the ability to attract and retain good staff depends on the ability to set high professional standards and to protect staff from political interference.
One of the reasons I accepted John Musante’s offer to work for the town was that I knew I would be working directly for him. He hired me, evaluated me, and could fire me. I was comfortable with that, because I knew I would be judged on my work and not on political considerations.
I have seen instances in cities where a new mayor comes in and “cleans house,” usually with deleterious effects. Mayors fire people for a range of reasons, some professional and some very much political, including campaign promises to vested constituencies, political grudges from councilors, and, unfortunately, a desire to put the blame for bad news on someone else.
A manager has the opportunity to take a long-term view of the town’s needs. He or she does not need to worry about running for reelection in two or four years. Key issues such as zoning, public safety, education, community quality of life, public health, and infrastructure are not resolved by quick fixes. They require vision, public engagement, and attention to detail. Those are qualities of a professional manager.
If the town needs a spokesperson, it could copy the example of the many council/manager forms of government in Massachusetts and have one of the council members act a mayor. This is what Cambridge does, for example.
Leadership does not come from a single strong leader. Leadership comes from bringing people together, not making them follow you.
Finally, as a compromise, the Charter Commission has looked at combining the elements of an elected mayor and a professional manager and is discussing creating a director of administration and finance.
While this position sounds good in theory, it has serious drawbacks that I believe would make it inconsequential at best and unworkable at worst. One person should have ultimate responsibility for hiring, evaluating, and terminating staff. Any diffusion of those responsibilities will be confusing to staff and to the public.
Sandy Pooler is the deputy town manager for the town of Arlington. Prior to that, he served as finance director for Amherst and chief administrative officer for Newton.
