How Would the New Charter Affect Me?

This is not just about how the City is administered. It is crucial to understand the real leadership implications a change would mean for you as a resident.

The City is very successful, right?  How willing are you to test the claim that changing the way it's run is going to be "better?"  (perhaps not?)

If you had an effective smooth-running team at work, would it make sense to completely change the team's structure & functions?  The Council asserts the new Charter is going to be "better" because it gives Council members more power. Pepper Pike is a consistently highly-rated suburb with a recent string of successful improvements.  Did Council consider that, instead, maybe other cities they would like to copy should be doing things the way Pepper Pike does them??

Potential to lose your right to keep the Mayor you voted for

Pepper Pike electors "hire" or "fire" the Mayor through elections. The new Charter lets Council remove the Mayor on their own, without residents weighing in.

Disjointed government leadership

The unitary chain of command structure under the current Charter positions the Mayor as the single person who knows the City and its operations best, inside & out.  The Mayor works full-time while the Council members are part-time and only episodically engaged with City work.  Under the replacement Charter, mayoral responsibilities transferred to Council would be stripped away piecemeal and distributed arbitrarily among seven Council members.

Confusion as to who is responsible for what

As Council shifts responsibilities from the Mayor to themselves, it will be difficult for residents to know who is responsible for what.  Accountability would become ambiguous and completely counter to Council's stated goals of "improved communications, transparency, and responsiveness."

Lack of accountability and reduced efficiency in your local government

As legislators, Council members have no direct authority over City employees. They spend limited time doing City work and engaging with staff, and hold no proven competencies in directing operations, nor do they carry responsibility for administrative follow-through on decisions. Breaking executive work into pieces and distributing it among a handful of part-time legislators ensure communication breakdowns, buck-passing, reduced efficiency, and predictable frustration for both residents and City employees.

Eliminating a clear separation of roles would hurt City effectiveness

The current system works well because there is a logical separation of roles and a balance of power. Council controls the purse strings, weighs in on appointments + every topic of impact, and it votes on issues. The Mayor's broad scope is to lead the whole. In the new Charter, part-time Council members would control the purse strings, key appointments, hiring and firing of top officials, and pieces of decision making. The Mayor would be stripped of meaningful authority and reduced to managing City employees and day-to-day finances. We would lose focused leadership of the whole and a balance of power. Reducing operational effectiveness is a clear violation of Council's stated goal of "effectiveness!"