IN LIEU OF A MAYOR.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 November 1919, Page 7

IN LIEU OF A MAYOR.

CITY MANAGERSHIP ON TRIAL. AN AMERICAN EXPERIMENT. East Cleveland, the first city in the United States to adopt tlie plan of having a city manager in lieu of a mayor, thereby banning politics from the ad-, ministration of the city, has just completed its first year, says the New York Sun. There is a division of opinion as to whether the plan is a success or not. Many claim that under a city manager the citizens of the town have taken this attitude: "It is the manager's business to run the city, why should we worry about the details of polities'? Mind your own business, and let the city manager mind the city's.". This public apathy has become so real, that many of the citizens are already advancing the proposition that it would be well to have a few candidates for public office, just to keep the people in mind that there is really such a thing as a city government. These men declare that there is nothing like the old system to keep the voter awake. Mr. C. M. Osborne, the city manager, in his first annual report, comments on this public apathy, and expressed the hope that the resume of his first 12 months' ' achievements would awaken the citizens'

interest in the business of their city. A city manager is In no wise exempt from criticism; angry citizens are asking why no public improvements were made in the first year of his reign. His reply is that he has kept the city's expenditure within its income, and that it was a war year, and that all unnecessary public works had to be postponed. Furthermore, he says that the city has no excess public funds, and that it was good business not to launch any ambitious programme of public improvement without having the money to pay for it. The city manager, he asserts, was put in to give the city a business administration, not to run the city into debt, and then Hsk the citizens to dig down in their pookets to foot the bill.

East Cleveland has a population of I «5,G00, an area of three square miles; j it has no slums, therefore no big social I problems. The city manager's task is I largely one of administration, purely a I question of getting the full value for ( every cent of the Nts,OOOdoi that it takes to run this venturesome little city, that went so far as to try to collect taxes from John D. Rockfeller, who lias a home there—and failed.

The business men who have dealings with the city manager administration are all for it. They agree that they are treated in a' more business-like way, and that the manager system eliminates tlw political personality angle for contracts. Bids are studied, accepted, or rejected simply on their merits; much quicker action is the result.

In regard to applying this system to large cities, students of East Cleveland are reluctant to express their opinion. They realise that a healthy and lively interest in municipal affairs is essential to the maintenance of good government, and the apparent lapse of all interest whatsoever that has come over most of the citizens of East Cleveland has caused many of the students to refrain from drawing hasty conclusions. They assert that the attitude of municipal indifference is only a temporary condition, brought about by tiie decision to give the eity manager free, full, and unhampered control of the city affairs, to show just exactly what he can do in his first term of office. They also ascribe a large part' of tiie indifference to the natural reaction from the strong, partisanship that was developed here by numerous bitter factional fights.