George Cuff, a municipal governance expert, discusses the roles of mayors, councillors, and administrators in local government models during a meeting of city council on Wednesday afternoon.--News Photo Collin Gallant
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Leadership is neither going along to get along nor “fighting” city hall from the inside, a municipal governance consultant said during a special meeting of Medicine Hat city council Wednesday.
George Cuff has worked with hundreds of municipalities over a 40-year career and worked with Medicine Hat most recently in 2002.
He was brought back this week to discuss local government and governance practice at a committee of the whole meeting where he outlined general expectations of council from citizens and provincial legislation.
“Council says, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ and managers should say, ‘Here’s how we get it done,'” said Cuff, at the same time noting that the public is less concerned with procedural victories.
“They expect you to work together and care about the future of the city. They expect you to work as co-equals, understanding that the mayor is more ‘co-equal” than others under the legislation.”
The meeting comes after at least one year of conflict between Mayor Linnsie Clark, council and top administrators. Two months ago, seven councillors voted to sanction Clark for breaching council’s code of conduct during an exchange with city manager Ann Mitchell last August over procedural issues with a corporate reorganization.
Her pay was docked, access to staff limited and she no longer chairs council meetings.
Cuff didn’t specifically address the local situation, but said councillors can become overwhelmed with the role, lost in options and mayors can over-estimate their power.
Clark ended the meeting with questions about management style and debating Cuff over the interactions between elected officials and staff, and challenging Cuff’s support for a one-employee (the city manager) reporting to council.
“We’re elected and therefore accountable to the public,” said Clark, which she said differs from a business or agency board. “As the mayor I’m most accountable and perfectly happy to be accountable for things that are under my control … but when I’m accountable for things I don’t have control over, that’s not great.”
Cuff replied that is the nature of elected office to a large degree, later adding a forceful point about the role of council and taking a wide view of responsibility.
“Governance should be done here (in council), there are fundamentals that can be watered away,” he said. “Decisions need to be made here … whatever happens, not by an email from somebody saying this is how we do things.”
Following a two-hour presentation and brief question and answer program in open council, the meeting was set to reconvene in a closed-session workshop later on Wednesday.
Cuff was scheduled to meet with top administrators for a similar session on Thursday morning.
On Wednesday he outlined that a mayor should act as a liaison between councillors, councillors should concern themselves with high-level decision making and evaluating options and background from staffers, and the city manager should be responsive to all council members.
Having councillors involved in administration leads to serious problems and disfunction, while administration must be responsible to council.
“You should set good polices and that leads to good management, otherwise you’re telling administrators to ‘go for it,'” he said.
Coun. Andy McGrogan chaired the meeting as deputy mayor.
“I found it extremely valuable to get our purpose back on track,” he said.
Coun. Ramona Robins said that initial orientation for seven new council members this term was highly technical, but lacking.
“This halfway check in, I would have appreciated it a few months ago,” she said, stating small steps could be implemented but also questioned Cuff on how councils react to his recommendations.
“Could there be significant change overnight, probably not,” said Cuff. “There are councils that pick up on it really quickly.”
“There are some things you can do, and some have done it better than others and some that get grounded in personality politics.”
