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Mayor wants more power; will he get it?

Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard left his good judgment at home last week when he announced that he plans to seek a more powerful role for the city's mayor. He wants Clearwater to change its form of government from the council/manager form to the strong-mayor form.

And he intends to run for the job.

Hibbard, who is in his first term as mayor, is the last person who ought to be driving this truck. Someone might want to remind him how the public's opinion of previous mayors changed when those individuals let their ambition show.

This is not the first time that someone has floated the idea of changing Clearwater's form of government. However, it is the first time, at least in recent memory, that the guy who wants the job has positioned himself as the instigator of the effort. If Hibbard wanted this idea on the public's agenda that badly, didn't he know someone else in town willing to make the suggestion instead?

The idea of asking voters if they want to change Clearwater's form of government has been vetted by a couple of city charter review committees in the past, but in the end they decided the city's government worked just fine.

The idea also was floated publicly by Clearwater attorney Tim Johnson Jr. before he retired and moved to California. Johnson's suggestion landed with a thud.

Hibbard apparently is unwilling to let it rest there. More than a few Clearwater government watchers were surprised to see the headline in Saturday's St. Petersburg Times: "Mayor wants stronger post." Hibbard told a Times reporter, but apparently few other people, that after the City Council appoints a new charter review committee at its meeting tonight, he intends to ask the committee to put a new form of government on its agenda.

Under the manager-council form of government, a professional city manager runs the daily operations of the city, develops a proposed budget, and supervises the city staff. The city manager is hired by the elected City Council and works at its pleasure, but the City Council makes laws and establishes policy; it does not run the city departments. The mayor is merely the ceremonial head of government and has only one vote on the five-member City Council.

Under the strong-mayor form of government, the elected mayor runs the city's day-to-day operations, hires and fires, and develops the city budget. The mayor often hires an administrator or two to take care of the details.

Clearwater has long prided itself on having professional city management, and though every manager has not been stellar, there has been no groundswell of support for abandoning professional management and putting the city government in the hands of an elected politician.

Fortunately, only the voters can change the city charter to modify the form of government. The charter review committee cannot make the decision on its own, and neither can the sitting mayor.

Even if he might wish he could.

[Last modified January 17, 2007, 22:14:55]