Casie Pierce

04/07/05   It's not the system that's wrong. It's our apathy.

Our current council-manager system best resembles a corporation's business structure, or more realistically, a non-profit, since municipalities aren't generally engaged in the business of earning profits.

A normal corporate business structure includes a Board of Directors (city council) usually elected by shareholders (voting citizens) and a Chairman of the Board (Mayor) who oversees and facilitates board meetings, etc., with the entire Board working together to put together a budget and also voting to hire the CEO or Executive Director (City Manager).

The CEO works to implement the goals/mission/will of the Board, which also happens to be the interests of the shareholders, especially since they are implementing the desired outcomes of the shareholders, and that person is also responsible for ensuring that expenditures remain within the budget. The CEO puts a staff together, hires department heads, etc.  While the CEO isn't directly "accountable" to the shareholders, the Chair and the Board are.

If a shareholder has a problem with the way his stocks (taxes) are or are not being used or valued, then he can go to a board meeting (city council meeting) and air out grievances (open mike) at the meeting.  If enough shareholders (voting citizens) are upset enough about it all, then they elect new board members at the next election. Or, the Board can listen to their shareholders (constituents) and then work together to better define goals and relay those goals to the CEO in order to carry out the will of the shareholders.

If the Chairman (Mayor) is the only person responsible for overseeing and managing the daily activities of all the various departments of the company, it would be closer to a sole-proprietorship. No one but the owner of the company has a say in how the company is run, and there would be no need for a Board of Directors. Everything is essentially the decision of the owner/sole-proprietor.

Well, I don't want a sole-proprietorship style of management for Dallas!

I'm tired of people spinning the council-manager form of municipal governance as some whacked-out and Old-World way of management from the Dark Ages when the reality is that it's a more evolved form, designed specifically to emulate a more structured business/corporation -- and for good reason -- to keep the politics out of the business of trash pickup, pothole repair, park maintenance, police and fire pay and utilities distribution.

How can these mundane management issues become politicized? How political can something like picking up stray dogs be?? We should be decades ahead of other large cities in terms of efficiency.

Nothing is wrong with "the system". Less than 10% of the population bothering to voting is the problem. If citizens don't care enough to do something about the people running the show (i.e., vote them out of office or run against them), then it's not the system's fault. This is a mutual process.

With that said, perhaps I'm merely making a case FOR the proponents of the charter amendment. If just a handful of voters and community activists are the only ones who ever bother to do anything about decisions that effect their quality of life, then maybe we should just lay it all at the doorstep of one person and do away with the city council altogether. After all, that would be much easier than trekking down to City Hall or calling in code complaints, right??

I always assumed the people of Dallas were way, way, way smarter than the people of most other large cities than to just lazy-out and let someone else solve all of our problems for us.

I guess we'll see come May 7.