I believe Amherst needs a mayor. I believed that before my five-plus years as chairwoman of the Select Board, and that experience only strengthened my belief.
There’s a structural disconnect between the voters of the town and the vision for the town. With the Charter Commission process, we have a valuable opportunity to change that.
Unfortunately, that group is so focused on addressing public frustration with Town Meeting that improving the executive branch is getting short shrift, no doubt because its weaknesses are less obvious. But now is the time to bring true accountability to both branches of Amherst government.
Under any system, the work of the town will be based on some kind of a vision for what is needed and how to achieve that. What varies is who determines, carries out, and weighs in on that vision.
With a mayor, candidates would need to articulate their visions and voters would get to decide on whose most closely matched their own sense of what is best for Amherst. Once in office, how the mayor was — or wasn’t — implementing that vision would be monitored by the community, and if anyone had an issue with how that was going, the mayor would obviously be the person to contact about it. When re-election time rolls around, voters get to reward or punish that performance.
This connection between the voters and the vision is strong, clear and direct. Our current system lacks that.
The Select Board’s authority is limited and its ability to influence any sort of implementation is modest, so that doesn’t lend itself to a vision much more specific than “trying to be good stewards of the town.”
The town manager typically has either an expressed or an implied vision, and has nearly full implementation authority, as staff time and priorities are entirely within that purview.
But the town manager only reports to the Select Board, not the voters. So the public can’t express meaningful support or opposition to any of that by ballot, because there’s no elected position with clear responsibility for what is, or isn’t, happening.
This connection between the voters and the vision is weak and ambiguous.
The concept of a manager and council form of government, as recommended in Sandy Pooler’s column last week (“Why a manager is best choice for Amherst”) and currently under consideration by the Charter Commission, only increases the voter-vision disconnect. More executive authority would be given to the manager; whatever is left would rest with a council that is larger than the current Select Board and would have much more on its plate, because its primary responsibility would be legislative.
The ability for voters to influence the town’s priorities and direction would be more diluted because the connection between them and the town’s executive branch would be even weaker than it is now.
Lots of scary maybes and anecdotes are offered as reasons why a mayor isn’t the best option. But the fact is, both managers and mayors have the potential to be terrific or terrible. Individuals have a variety of strengths and weaknesses, regardless of job title. I worked closely with two town managers who were about as different as night and day, so I know that a manager is not some defined commodity that guarantees certain results.
But a key difference between managers and mayors is the ease of replacing them when they aren’t a good fit.
With a manager, there is a contract with expensive buyout provisions, and the need to get a majority of the oversight body to agree on inadequate job performance in open public meeting discussions — something that too often leads to candor being stifled or dignity being assaulted.
With a mayor, the voters get to decide. And that doesn’t imply frequent turnover. Voters re-elect mayors they like.
People bemoan a mayor being “politically motivated,” as if acting in the interests of constituents is a bad thing. The flip side of the “new mayor comes in and fires staff” example is the “manager keeping staff long beyond their effectiveness” example.
With a mayor, if that firing were careless and not aligned with community priorities, voters would make that crystal clear. With a manager, that decision, with all of its outright and opportunity costs, is untouchable, because the manager has sole authority over staff.
As a voter, which would you prefer?
As many applaud the Charter Commission’s work to propose a replacement for Town Meeting that would create a stronger connection between voters and those who enact laws on our behalf, shouldn’t we also want that for the big-picture and day-to-day leadership of the town? Why, with this valuable chance to change our government, would we increase the accountability of the legislative branch and decrease it for the executive branch?
The Charter Commission should give us the opportunity to vote on a mayor-council proposal.
Stephanie O’Keeffe, of Amherst, is a former chairwoman of the Select Board.
