Peter Callaghan from the (Tacoma) News Tribune discusses whether cities should be led by strong mayors or managers. In the process he interviews someone who has seen both types of governments, former Bremerton Mayor Cary Bozeman.
In 2005, in the wake of the Brame scandal and the Corpuz dismissal, I asked Cary Bozeman, now the director of the Port of Bremerton, which form was best. He had been both the “weak” mayor of Bellevue and the “strong” mayor of Bremerton.
Strong leaders are the key. But because it is more likely that a city can hire a strong leader from around the nation than find one to elect in town, he said he thinks a council-manager system is best for most cities.
When Bainbridge Island was going through its conversation about whether to dump the strong mayor, I also asked Bozeman what he thought about it, and what he thought Bremerton should have. He declined to answer.
Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? The question has come up in the past. Anyone here for changing the form of governments in the three other Kitsap cities now led by mayors? Or are the cities better off sticking with what they have?
This brings to mind lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Whether it is nobeler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to . . .whatever comes next is pretty morbid.
Rhetorically,we may also ask, where have all the leaders gone? Have they stopped leading, and become City Managers!
Seems to me that we have become a nation of irresponsibile dolts, in
that it’s much easier to deflect, dodge, and scape-goat, than to face responsibility and act on principles, and sometime fess up, and eat crow for dinner.