My town has both a mayor and a city manager. I’m not sure exactly how it works. The mayor is elected by the voters. The city manager is an employee, hired by the city council.
In the U.S., these are not official. They’re informal courtesies. People keep calling a former mayer–especially a famous one like Giuliani–“mayor” because they feel weird not doing that.
How a mayor becomes mayor differs from state to state and from city to city. In most states, every city has the authority to determine its own governmental structure.
So you can have a “strong mayor” system, for example, in which the mayor is usually directly elected by the public and has broad executive powers.
Or you can have a “weak mayor-council-city manager” system, in which the mayor is simply the most senior member of the city council and the council hires a city manager do execute the day-to-day executive functions.
And every conceivable variation and combinationn thereof.
In Dayton, Ohio, for example, there are five members of the city commission. Two are elected in X years for four-year terms, and two plus the mayor are elected in X+2 years for four-year terms. Even though the mayor is elected separately as a mayor and not a plain city commissioner, the mayor has no executive powers beyond being the chairperson of the commission. The commission as a whole hires the city manager, who runs the municipal government.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, the city council is larger, and for many decades, dozens of candidates would run at once and the nine top vote-getters would be elected. The one with the highest number of votes would get to be mayor for the two years until the next election. More recently, they changed it so that the mayor is elected separately from the other council members.
So there are infinite variations.
And to add yet further complication, in the US, there can be multiple overlapping local governments. For instance, in most (but not all) states, the entire state is divided into counties, and so you’ve got county government in addition to city government. Counties are (usually) bigger than cities (though New York City contains five counties), but usually, the county government has less power in places where both exist. I’ve no idea how my county’s commissioners are chosen-- I don’t think I’ve ever seen them on a ballot.
And then there are also school districts, which are usually coterminous with cities, but are actually completely independent of them. If the mayor of Cleveland thinks that there are big problems with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, he can’t do anything more about it than anyone else living in the district can. Well, he probably has an easier time scheduling a meeting with the superintendent than most folks would, and the superintendent would be more likely to listen to what he says, but it’d still just be talk.
I actually don’t think most school districts are coterminous with cities or towns. I know NY best, so I’ll use that as an example - there are about 700 school districts to cover 62 cities and around 900 towns, so obviously many school districts are going to include multiple towns and/or cities and others include only part of a town.( I know one town with 10 school districts) Some districts are coterminous with cities - the districts of Buffalo, New York City, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers are coterminous with the cities, and those districts get their funding from the municipal government rather than paying separate school taxes levied by a school district. NYC and Yonkers don’t elect school board members - they are appointed by the mayor/city council and at least in NYC, the mayor appoints the majority of members and can remove his appointees at will, giving him full control.
And you might be surprised about the Cleveland Metropolitan School District * - since the mayor appoints the members and chooses the CEO together with the board, I’m guessing he has quite a bit of influence since it’s possible they board members may not be reappointed when their terms expire.
- I didn’t specifically check Cleveland. I looked up how many cities have mayoral control of schools ( about 20) and noticed Cleveland was listed.
I wonder how Clint Eastwood likes being called “Mayor”?
True, I suppose it has to be different in rural areas. I’m most familiar with urban areas: Around here, there’s pretty much a 1:1 correspondence between the suburbs and their school districts (aside from a few micro-suburbs too small to have their own).
And I didn’t know about the Cleveland mayor appointing the members. I should have known about it, but didn’t.
Cleveland is the only city in Ohio with a municipal school system. Everywhere else in the state, it works like you described. (A “metropolitan school district” is a school district owned by a city, while a “city school district” means it’s not part of the city government. They changed the terminology a few years ago, but there also used to be “county school boards” that were not part of the county government and didn’t even have the same boundaries.)
Deleted upon edit
In such a set-up, the city manager is the one who runs and directs the municipal bureaucracy on a day-to-day basis, while the mayor is a more ceremonial role - although in these systems, the mayor may also simultaneously serve as chair of the council. It has the advantage that for city manager, you can hire a career professional with expertise in managing large organisations. The whole system is a bit analogous to corporate governance, where you have a CEO (corresponds to city manager) running the business on a daily basis, and a chairperson of the board of directors.
Well, I admire your humility, but the usual American practice is “once an Honorable, always an Honorable.” It’s a courtesy that reflects the fact that you were once a public official.
Now this, I agree with. We have just one President at a time. Harry Truman, as noted above, said he just wanted to be referred to as plain ol’ “Mr. Truman” once he left the White House. He was content to be treated just like any other citizen of the United States. I wish his successors had followed his example.
And Cicero, Illinois, has a president as its top municipal official. I think it may be unique among American cities: Office of the President – Town of Cicero, IL.