The City Charter

I've been listening on WSPD this week as members of the Take Back Toledo movement discuss their efforts, and while I'm behind the idea of getting Carty Finkbeiner out of office and working to find better candidates for mayor as well as council seats; their discussion of changing the city charter concerns me. Recalling Carty and finding better candidates are excellent ideas, but when they start talking about changing the city charter from the strong mayor to city manager, I get concerned that they're throwing baby out with the bathwater.

There's no doubt that, to date, the strong mayor form of government hasn't worked very well in Toledo. A summary of the last eight years that someone related to me may explain it. I was talking to a friend who told me, "We've had the lazy administration followed by the crazy administration." An astute observation, but not encompassing enough. Since the implementation of the strong mayor form of government, we've had crazy, lazy, crazy.

We've only had Carty Finkbeiner and Jack Ford in office since the start of the strong mayor. Quite simply, that's not a fair trial. Strong mayor works in many, many cities in the US. Two abominably bad strong mayors should not condemn the strong mayor form of government. It could be wildly successful with good people in the office, which is what Take Back is trying to accomplish. They should give new blood a chance before they try to change the charter.

Now, that's not to say that changing the charter isn't a bad idea. Rather than go for changing the strong mayor to a city manager, they should shoot for the ridiculous way that the mayor in this city is elected.

When I moved to Toledo, I was surprised at how the mayoral election was run. The top two finishers in the primary have a runoff in November? The idea was supposedly to make the office non-partisan. It didn't make the office non-partisan. Instead, it created a warped version of the two party system -- one where we have two Democratic parties. If we elected the President like that, the November ballot would have only listed Obama and Clinton as choices instead of the 25 or so candidates that were there. That's really not a fair choice.

Instead of the idiotic system we have, why not follow the system that we use for natonal offices? You have a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, and any third parties that may want to get involved. Why not actually give the people of Toledo a choice?

The problem is the people, not the office.