City Representation (United States)
There are different types of city councils in the United States .
Council Manager Government
In the United States, the Council Manager Government system is the most common form of city council. The population elects a council of 5 to 11, rarely more, city councilors. These now appoint a Council Manager (" Council Manager "), alternatively called City Manager (" City Manager "), in the position of head of the city administration . This is bound to certain obligations through a freely negotiable employment contract. The office of head of administration is independent of that of the council chairman and should in most cases also be politically independent ( non-partisan ), even if it is widely accepted that this is in fact difficult to do. As a rule, the council chairman assumes the function of community spokesman and is therefore functionally the mayor. It is therefore customary to name both representatives of the two-pronged city government - the mayor (council chair) and the city director (administrative chair) when giving information on community management.
Mayor Council Government
In addition to this delegating city council, there are two forms of mayor council government system (“mayor council government ”, translated “city president government”). Here, next to the City Council (to be city council a mayor (also) mayor ) elected directly. Depending on the division of tasks in favor of the mayor, a distinction is made between a weak ( weak mayor or ceremonial form ) or a strong ( strong-mayor or executive form ) form of the mayor's government .
In the strong city presidential government, the executive is solely in the hands of the mayor; he has far-reaching powers and determines all other administrative positions. In the weak city presidential government, not only the legislative but also the executive power lies with the city council, which thus determines the administrative posts in addition to the city ordinances. The mayor only has representative tasks and acts as the community spokesman.
The strong mayor government is typical of larger cities, while the weak mayor government is typically found in small parishes.
City Commission Government
The Mayor Council Government has largely supplanted the older City Commission Government system ("Stadtkommissionsregierung"). There the individual functionaries or department heads of the city council were elected directly and often individually, whereby each city councilor was given a fixed administrative post by election. This type of division of tasks between elected persons is similar to the municipal constitution .