Government: Strong mayor system imperfect

Re: “Strong mayor system needed,” (TNT letter, 5/24).

While I feel a strong mayor system could work in my fair city, I don’t necessarily think it is any better than our current city manager system. I see a strong mayor having three major issues:

1) When we have an appointed city manager, we can look nationwide to a large pool of applicants. With a strong mayor, we have to look just in Tacoma.

I would be concerned about running out of qualified applicants or not having any willing to do the job. How many people do you know who oversee 2,000-plus employees and an annual budget of $1.5 billion?

2) In a strong mayor system, you have a person who is elected. Instead of working under the direct supervision of eight council members, the mayor would be supervised by 200,000. This can lead to distracting political issues.

3) If a city manager needs to go, the person can be fired in a very short amount of time. With a strong mayor, we would all suffer through a lengthy impeachment process that may result in just waiting out their term.

This story was originally published June 1, 2017 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Government: Strong mayor system imperfect."