City Clerk’s Notes Re: Oct. 30 meeting
The Harbor Springs City Charter is our Constitution. We all vote to ratify it as the rules that govern our city.
One of the sections of the Charter (4.6) talks about the City Council's relationship with the City Manager and City staff.
A little civics background: Harbor Springs, has what is known as a "Council-Manager" form of government. We are not a "Strong Mayor" government. The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) says about 70-75% of all cities in America are like us a "Council-Manager" government. The Council sets policy, the Manager runs day-to-day operations.
With that in mind, let’s go back to why our Charter requires Council to direct their actions toward the Manager and forbids Council from going directly to staff. This piece of our Charter is found in almost all other "Council-Manager" governments and it is written to protect staff from a member of Council directing them to do something in conflict with the Manager.
Without this Charter provision, it is not hard to imagine a scenario where a Councilmember takes advantage of their role and pushes a staff member to do something questionable. Maybe they ask for a staff member to be fired or a new staff member hired. In fact, I think we just saw that last Thursday.
In short, our Charter says our City staff have one boss-not six. It keeps everyone in their lane and provides role clarity. It promotes professionalism and accountability. And as we saw last week, it was approved by Harbor Springs voters for good reason.
As our Constitution, the City Charter is also our defense against Council overreach. We passed our Charter to provide guardrails for our city government. It splits power deliberately with the Council setting policy on behalf of the residents and overseeing the work of the Manager, and the Manager guiding staff to enact those policies. Along with the Circuit Court it is our own little version of separation of powers.
I know that all this talk about a secret meeting between the Mayor, Councilperson Reeve, Tom Richards and the City Clerk may seem silly to some. It is not silly. It is serious and it is something we need to understand clearly what happened, what was asked of staff, and why.
To aid in the community's understanding, A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was made yesterday morning for any notes about last Thursday's meeting. You might recall, the Council asked the Clerk to submit his recollections of the meeting to the City Attorney and requested the Mayor and Councilperson Reeve do the same.
The City Clerk has submitted his memo. The Mayor and Councilperson Reeve have not as of this posting.
The City Clerk’s Memo can be read here >>