5 Reasons - A Closer Look

Recently you may have received a flyer from "Residents for Council-Manager Government" titled "5 Reasons to Keep Council-City Manager Government". Let's examine the five best ways that these supporters could come up with to prove how Brunswick has benefited from a City Manager over the last twenty seven years.

"1. City Managers provide professional management. Brunswick City Manager operates under a national code of ethics, must possess administrative experience, and have an advanced college degree."

People throughout all walks of life provide "professional management." From single mothers raising their children while running a household and working a night job to the owner of the neighborhood gas station. Professionalism cannot be demanded by titles. It must be earned by gaining the respect of others.

Organizations that need to spell out a code of ethics in order to make their members behave properly unintentionally tell the world they have problems with unethical conduct and they want to fix it with a voluntary publicity stunt. People with integrity do not need a code of ethics. It is built in to their life and their reputation.

If you still believe that a "code of ethics" works, please click this link and read how Brunswick officials worked to and succeeded in changing a $10,000 study that was paid for by the taxpayers so that the final report read as they wanted. This information was presented to City Council and they took no action: http://home.earthlink.net/~savelivesinbrunswick/csu.htm Please make sure you read the scanned-in documents retrieved directly from the files of Cleveland State University.

Administrative experience? We need a leader, not another bureaucrat.

If an "advanced college degree" is a requirement for success, why do the 2001 statistics on the City of Brunswick web site show that 73.6% of Brunswick citizens over the age of 25 do not have any college degree at all? Are the vast majority of Brunswick adults considered failures by "Residents for Council-Manager Government"?

This observation is in no way intended to minimize the value or importance of a good education. However earning a degree is not an indication of how that education will be used. What's important is the application of knowledge, not the mechanism a person used to gain knowledge. It should be up to the citizens of Brunswick to determine the qualifications of their leaders. We do not need "cookie cutter" people running our city.

"2. City Managers have to be responsive to elected council members and residents. Appointed city managers have no guaranteed term of office. Council can remove the City Manager for any reason!"

Under the current Brunswick Charter, the City Manager has to keep precisely 3 people happy: a minority of City Council members. Not the 34,000 residents; no one except 3 of the 7 Council members because it requires a vote of 5 members of Council to remove the City Manager. It is absolutely impossible for the citizens to change the City Manager.

We all are aware of the debacle this year where four members of Council wanted to remove the former City Manager and were thwarted by the other three. Council even spent about $7,000 of taxpayer money for an outside law firm to figure out a way to get rid of the City Manager. Were they planning to pay him off to leave? He was already retired and rehired. Our former City Manager stated several times that he works only for City Council, not the people of Brunswick.

"Council can remove the City Manager for any reason!"? Nonsense. City Council's actions and inactions in this matter spoke louder than these words.

"3. Many Successful Cities use the Council-Manager Government. ..."

Undoubtedly. Many "Successful Cities" also use the Strong Mayor Government. We do not care what other cities do. We are not sheep. We want to do what is right for our community and neighborhoods.

"4. Brunswick has benefited from Council-Manager Government. Under the Council-Manager form of government Brunswick City has obtained millions of dollars from sources outside the community."

We have had a Council-Manager government for over a quarter century. We certainly hope we are obtaining the funding due us from the taxes we pay to our state and federal governments. Does anybody really think this would not have happened if a full-time Strong Mayor form of government had been put in place in 1975?

"5. Brunswick is already a great place to live! Cleveland Magazine rated Brunswick as one of the top 15 suburbs in Metropolitan Cleveland. ..."

And we absolutely agree! The question is whether maintaining the status quo will take us where we need to be in the future. Look around Brunswick and decide whether the closed stores help or hurt us. We take out restaurants and put in gas stations! Many times residents and businesses have brought their concerns to Council meetings about how difficult it is to work with the Building Department and otherwise do business in Brunswick. Yet the City Manager and part-time City Council have not stopped the complaints through positive action. We now have a threat from businesses to move out of our Industrial Park because basic telecommunications services are not available.

"The past is important because it brought us to where we are today. However, our past cannot take us into the future. We have to do that."

The question before us is simple: Do you believe that a part-time City Council that serves as both the part-time legislative and part-time executive branch of the city government can take Brunswick where we need to go?

A City Manager is an employee of a part-time City Council, not a leader of the city. He or she is a bureaucrat and carries out policy created by a part-time City Council. He or she cannot challenge or veto anything promulgated by City Council, regardless of what his or her "professional management" and "advanced college degree" tell them should be done. A City Manager is a sheep and you are not the shepherd.

Moving Brunswick forward is a full-time job. We need a Strong Mayor working for We the People to move our city in the direction we want to go and at the speed we want to move.