Don't Compare One City Government to the Other

Unless you attend city council meetings regularly, you might assume all cities operate in the same fashion: A balance of power between a mayor and a city council.

But that's not really the way it works.

Charters - the document which prescribes how a city operates - differ from city to city. I won't bore you with the details. You can read more about charters here.

Marinette and Menominee have different organization structures. Marinette's calls for a managing mayor/strong council form of government while Menominee's calls for a city manager/strong council model, with a ceremonial mayor.

(I didn't know this until recently but Madison, where I lived for a decade, once had a city administrator in addition to a mayor. The administrator handled the day-to-day details. That sounds like a good arrangement to me; freed from mundane duties, a mayor could then devote full energies to being a visionary, diplomat, negotiator and all-round mover and shaker.)

Marinette had a city manager when I was a kid, and there's always been talk about having one again. Nothing ever comes to fruition, but this arrangement would have been useful during the Bob Harbick years.

Menominee's charter was last updated 20 years ago. It underwent a major change in early 1996, when the mayor's role was weakened and a city manager was hired.

Today, Menominee's mayor has no administrative duties, according to the charter: "The mayor shall be for all intents and purposes a voting member of the city council and shall preside at meetings of the council, represent the city in intergovernmental relationships, appoint with the advice and consent of the council the members of citizen advisory boards and commissions, present an annual state of the city message and perform other duties specified by the council. The mayor shall be recognized as head of the city government for all ceremonial purposes and by the governor for purposes of military law and shall be the chief executive officer of the city, but shall have no administrative duties."

Marinette operates under an ordinance code which specifies that the mayor is responsible for enforcing that code as well as supervising city management-level employees. He or she serves as chief operating or administrative officer for the city and communicates with the city council, as well as presides over meetings.

(That doesn't mean the mayor can't be a visionary and a doer, with ideas for enhancing the city. The city's current mayor, Steve Genisot, demonstrated his ability to do this when he presented a plan for the now-under-construction community rec center.)

In other words, Marinette's mayor runs the city while Menominee's presides over ceremonies.

In both cases, the mayor's desires can be overridden by the city council. It happens, a lot more than you might think. Which is why you should be attending city council meetings, or if you live in the county, county board meetings. Find out first hand how your city operates.