On Nov. 10, 2005, while the Pensacola City Council was debating whether to have a referendum on the Community Maritime Park, I suggested in my Outtakes column that we include whether the city should switch to a strong mayor form of government:
Currently, Mayor John Fogg’s job is primarily ceremonial. He represents the city at official functions, chairs the council meetings and makes committee assignments. Tom Bonfield, the hired city manager, actually runs the city.
Pensacola is a town that is governed by a 10-member committee. Anyone who has served on such a large committee or board knows how difficult it is to get such an unwieldy group to accomplish anything—unless it has a strong leader that is empowered to set the agenda for the group and execute its plans.
This city needs to have a strong, full-time mayor that is truly Pensacola’s CEO. The strong mayor could push this coastal town out of the doldrums that allow the rich to get richer, the poor to get poorer and an endless stream of studies that never achieve anything. The strong mayor would be the one person the voters could hold responsible for city government. If they don’t like what’s happening, then they can elect someone else.
After we won the referendum fight in September 2006, I suggested five possibilities for the next big issue:
- Property tax caps
- Strong Mayor
- Annexation – At the time, Baptist Hospital wasn’t within the city limits.
- Consolidation
- Healthcare: uninsured
The only one that gained momentum was the strong mayor, which meant changing the city’s charter to make the largely ceremonial mayor the city’s chief executive officer.
- I argued, “Meanwhile, the 10-member council-city manager form of government is a decent provider of basic services, but not innovative. We hold on to money-losing enterprises like the Port and City garbage services. We have an arbitrary small boundary to our downtown area. We have no one elected official to recruit new businesses. Everything happens here so slowly in a world that is speeding by us.”
On August 20, 2007, a group of over 25 business and community leaders, led by financial advisor John Peacock, made a presentation at the Pensacola City Council’s Committee of the Whole meeting. The Pensacola City Council agreed to review the city charter. Peacock made a passionate plea for change in a viewpoint we published.
By the end of the year, the City Council appointed a charter review commission, which was chaired by attorney Crystal Spencer.
We covered the meetings, and the discussions were heated, particularly the June 19, 2008 meeting:
- March 2008 Charter Commission notes
- Notes: Charter review 4.16.08
- Notes: Charter review 6.19.08
- More notes: Charter Review
By May 2009, the new charter was nearly finished. The document included:
The charter called for a strong mayor, who would “exercise the executive powers of the City and supervise all departments.” He would serve a four-year term.
The City Council would become the legislative branch. The at-large seats would be eliminated and the council membership reduced to seven single-member districts. They, too, would serve four-year terms. The council elections would be staggered every two years, similar to how the county commission elections are done.
The Mayor would appoint the City Administrator – who serves at his pleasure. He would also appoint the City Attorney – which must be approved by the City Council.
Dig Deeper: The final draft would keep the two at-large council members, but voters would later eliminate them through a referendum.
No Boss Mayor was formed to fight the new charter, and I dissected their arguments, as I did during the Community Maritime Park fight.
I posted my analysis of the charter:
Pensacola has a unitarian form of government, meaning the power, in theory, is vested in one elected body. There is an administrative staff, but its role is to implement the directives, programs and policies of the council. In other words, the council passes it, the staff gets it done. If the staff fails to do so, it is removed. If the council fails to follow the wishes of the voters, its members aren’t re-elected.
It’s very straightforward. The council runs the city. Voters can change the council if they aren’t happy and can thereby change how the city is run.
Pensacola city government doesn’t quite operate this way. There are several barriers to this straightforward governance. Some are actually good, others are not.The City Council only controls two positions, city attorney and city manager. By law, council members are not to interfere with the city administration. Read more.
- In November 2009, the new charter passed 7,762 to 6,308. Ashton Hayward defeated Mayor Mike Wiggins the following year to become the city’s first strong mayor.