City charter update to address roles of mayor, city manager

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

The role of the city clerk isn't the only significant item that will be addressed by the Peachtree City Council during its updating of the city charter.

Council also has to figure out how to structure the powers held by the mayor and the city manager. Back when the charter was originally enacted when Peachtree City was much smaller the role of a city manager was not specifically addressed, City Attorney Rick Lindsey told council at its meeting Thursday.

The charter gives significant power to the mayor, who is designated as the city's chief executive officer. But, as Mayor Bob Lenox pointed out last week, he delegates many of those duties to City Manager Jim Basinger.

Lindsey wants to make sure the charter addresses the relationship between the mayor and the city manager. He has suggested that the city manager be given the general supervision powers of the city.

As it stands right now "there is some overlapping" of the mayor's and city manager's responsibilities, Lindsey said.

Another significant change to the charter could be in the format of government that operates the city. There are several different formats of city government, but it is unclear exactly which Peachtree City currently is using.

One of the two formats mentioned was the strong mayor format, which uses the mayor as the executive branch to reports to council about city business. The other format is council-manager, where the city manager acts as the executive branch and reports to the mayor and council.

After a brief discussion, council decided to go with the council-manager format, and Lindsey agreed to begin working on wording that for the charter.

Lindsey also had several other recommendations about changing the charter, including:

Rewording the mayor's veto power, which can be overridden by three votes from remaining council members.

Eliminating the election of a provisional mayor pro tem, which would be created in case the mayor and mayor pro tem can't fulfill their duties; in that case, with two council members absent, council could not take any official action since there would not be a quorum.

Eliminate a three dollar "street tax" assessed to all residents between 18 and 50 years old, which may be illegal anyway.

Rewording the charter to forbid the keeping of all livestock in the city and not just cattle, hogs and goats.

For most of the minor changes to the charter, it will not be necessary to get approval of the state legislature. However, if the changes are significant, they must be approved by the General Assembly, Lindsey said.

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