Police Chief, Fire Chief, Finance Director – Council or City Administrator?
The City Charter currently states the elected 5 member City Council has the hiring, retention, and dismissal control over the top employee positions – Fire Chief, Police Chief, Finance Director, Recreation Director, etc.
Measure CC takes authority and control from the elected Council regarding Department Heads and gives authority and control to the unelected City Administrator.
Measure CC forbids the City Council by Charter from continuing to determine if their Fire Chief, Police Chief, Finance Director, Recreation Director, etc. should remain in their positions. The City Administrator will be the only person in Piedmont able to retain or dismiss the key-employees the City Council recruited and hired.
MEASURE CC asks, “Shall the measure amending the Charter of the City of Piedmont to clarify the duties and reporting structure for officers and employees of the City be adopted?”
Voters will decide whether to keep the City Charter as written or change it by voting Yes or No on Measure CC. The choice is as follows:
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Keep the City Charter, as is, with City Council controlling = Vote NO
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Change the City Charter placing City Administrator in control = Vote YES
CC is a power grab and proponents of CC completely misstate the way City Hall is run as justification. First, as written, CC is completely ineffective at telling voters what it will do. It should have read: “Shall the measure to amend the City Charter to reassign authority to terminate city department heads from City Council to the City Administrator be adopted”. Same word count. Such text would be much more informative to the voters and the fact that CC is drafted so poorly should tell you something.
Second, from the mayor in a recent news account: “[The Charter] contains language that suggests that the City Council is responsible for managing and directing the work of city officers. The Piedmont City Attorney strongly recommended that this ambiguity be clarified…” Read that carefully – “suggests” and “ambiguity” – if true then simply clarify the Charter language and keep the current reporting structure in place. Instead CC reassigns important oversight authority from Council to the City Administrator with no justification on the record.
Grab or giveaway, CC is bad for Piedmont and reduces the authority of our elected officials. Coupled with BB (fewer meetings, less voter choice), these measures weaken good governance in Piedmont and should be rejected by the voters.
Why make an unelected city employee the most powerful person in Piedmont ahead of you and your chosen representatives on the City
Council? Vote No on CC. Retain your influence and head off potential law suits. The distilled wisdom of the Piedmont electorate and their 5 elected Council members is more important than that of one unelected city employee. Power lost or abdicated is difficult to get back.
Sunny Bostrom~Fleming
Measure CC is unnecessary and will have unintended consequences. It takes away authority from the council and gives us, the citizens of Piedmont, nothing in return except a layer of opaque bureaucracy. It’s been suggested that because Measures BB and CC have been reviewed by our city attorney, they will be an improvement. Not necessarily. Remember that our city attorney (albeit a different one) reviewed and approved the undergrounding contract that cost Piedmonters an extra $2 million. Vote No on BB and CC.