Sioux Falls has seen significant growth and success in recent decades, due in part to the strong leadership of its mayors. The city’s mayor-council system has granted mayors substantial authority to manage city government and offer community leadership. However, the city council’s role as a part-time citizen legislature has not functioned as originally envisioned. It may be time to strengthen the role of the city council and better establish the intended checks and balances.
The Concept Was Good, But Not Perfect
Thirty years ago, on September 13, 1994, voters replaced an ineffective form of city government with a stronger and more effective model. Previously, five city commissioners each managed separate departments, leading to fragmented operations. Elected officials, often lacking supervisory experience and training, were unprepared for the significant responsibilities they faced. This setup led to frequent turf battles and disagreements, preventing City Hall from providing unified leadership.
Mayor Huether
Mayor TenHaken
Since then, Mayors Hanson, Munson, Huether, and TenHaken have provided the centralized leadership the city needed. This has been a good thing. However, the city council has played a surprisingly limited role in this new form of government.
Council Job Bigger and Less Powerful than Anticipated
The change to a mayor-council government fixed many problems; however, there have been surprises. Proponents of the change thought the council would be a powerful partner of the mayor, working together to get things done. They also expected that legislators/councilors could simply show up for a meeting once a week and vote yes or no on proposals from the administration. That has not worked out as planned.
Many council members have been frustrated with the job. With the mayor running council meetings, the council has sometimes been little more than a rubber stamp for his proposals. In addition, the city council job has proven to be bigger and more time-consuming than originally anticipated. Council members report that it takes many, many hours a week, including committee meetings and other time-consuming duties that add up. It has not been a rewarding part-time job for many who have served.
Mayoral Position Too Powerful
Another miss in the design of the new city government is that the mayor’s job is both too tough and too powerful. Some mayors have found it difficult to run city government all day and then attend long and sometimes tedious city council meetings one evening a week.
The mayor is the chief executive officer of the city. It may seem self-evident, but the chief executive should not also be part of the legislative branch of the government. Having the mayor on the council short-circuits the checks and balances that would normally be in place with traditional separation of powers. New mayors eventually figure out how to get things done without much involvement of the council. That is not a healthy situation.
Sioux Falls City Hall
My Ideas for Changing City Government
City government would be improved if we established a better separation of powers while at the same time, strengthening the role of our legislature. Here are some changes I think are worth considering in the charter and/or the way city government operates:
- Take the next mayor off the city council to establish better separation of powers.
- Add one more council position, either at large or from a new district, to keep the council at nine members.
- Raise the council compensation by 50% because of the hours and workload involved.
- Consider more support staff for the council to reduce the hours required.
- Adopt a better voting system, such as approval voting, to eliminate runoffs and sometimes unpopular results in our local elections. The savings from this change could help offset the cost of a new council member and higher compensation levels for council members.
The Council Could Propose Changes
The process for proposing changes to the charter is outlined in Section 8.01. Amendments can be proposed to voters through a petition, a recommendation from the charter revision commission, or action by the city council. The first option, a petition, is notoriously challenging. The second, has historically been unlikely since charter revision commission members often prefer maintaining the status quo. As a result, the responsibility largely falls to the city council. If there is to be a chance for voters to improve city government, it’s likely that the council will need to take the lead.
Either way, the city’s future looks promising. Our thirty-year-old government has facilitated substantial growth and progress, and it is poised to continue doing so.
Wow—to think it’s been almost 30 years since we labored through the days of commissioners such as Winegarden and Wingler. Had the change not occurred we would be quite a different city today. Thanks to Joe Kirby and Dale Froehlich and others who masterminded the modernization.
Sioux Falls has, indeed, been fortunate with the quality of mayoral leadership. We’ve come close in runoffs to electing lesser able leadership—lucky us.
Joe’s support of APPROVAL VOTING would get us out of the potentially dangerous runoff election risk, and I support that change especially.
City Council—it might seem to you and to some that it would be a power grab to step on these governance changes. Don’t worry about such a reaction, though. Step up and support these steps forward.