GUEST COLUMN: Counterpoints to Mayor Project's assertions about Issue 300

Like tens of thousands of voters in this city, I recently received an expensive, six-page, four-color brochure from the ‘Mayor Project’. Not coincidentally, The Gazette dutifully followed up with a supporting editorial for Issue 300.

The cost alone of this mailer is enough to lead us to question the authenticity of this effort, but beyond that is the distorted and misleading content.

There are many who oppose this idea but don’t have the money or the political machine’s support to send out brochures or mailers. Nevertheless, the Mayor Project should be held accountable itself for what is says and does. If this document is any indication of what citizens will get by voting for Issue 300 then we clearly should vote no on 300.

Here are some specific fact and counterpoints to the advertisement:

• Mayor Project asserts: Present form is “outdated system”

Fact: Council Manager Form is presently used in over 5,000 local governments in the United States, including San Antonio, Phoenix, Austin, and all major cities in Colorado except Denver. More cities have the “city manager” form than the ‘strong mayor’ form.

• Mayor Project asserts: City manager is ‘chief bureaucrat/career bureaucrat’

Fact:  Using the term ‘bureaucrat’ is designed to incite what the MP supporters apparently think is a gullible electorate. A city manager works at the pleasure of the city council and can be dismissed at council’s will at any time. The position is not civil service protected, and is designed to be filled by a professional trained expert in local government management.

• Mayor Project asserts: “five city managers in the last ten years”

Fact:  Liars figure and figures can lie. There have been only three managers in the past 14 years, including my service. The other ‘managers’ counted by the MP were interim managers.• Mayor Project asserts: City hall ‘failures’ are ‘not as much the failing of individuals as much as the failing of a system.’

Fact: The original premise of the Mayor Project was a need for leadership and accountability due to the lack thereof in the current mayor, council and city manager. Much of MP’s push has been based on the lack of popularity of the present mayor and council and the specific actions of one city manager. Clearly, the ‘failing of individuals’ has fueled this effort and the MP is seeking to capitalize on that perception among voters.

• Mayor Project asserts: City manager is “roving manager” (sic) for whom Colorado Springs is just the latest stop on a career path…”

Fact: No city manager of this city in the last 44 years has gone on to manage a city larger or with better compensation than Colorado Springs. Three of the former managers, including me, still live here and call this city home.

• Mayor Project asserts: The ‘more appropriate salary …. The $96,000 set forth in the MP or $210,000 of the last city manager?’

Fact: The MP fails to mention that their proposal includes a ‘chief administrative’ officer that the mayor will hire to run the day-to-day operations that the city manager now runs. The combined salaries of these two positions, Mayor and CAO, will far exceed the salary of a city manager. Colorado Springs, a city of almost 400,000 people, cannot be run effectively by one person, particularly one who has no experience in local government management.

These are just some of the accountability standards that the MP has failed to meet.If the people elect a mayor and council that consists of true leaders whose motivations are simply the good of this community, we will have the kind of government that we deserve, regardless of the form.

What is presently broken in our town is not city hall but the unelected elite’s influence over our community. We need a People Project, not a Mayor Project and we should vote this power-grabbing proposal down.

Mullen is a former Colorado Springs city manager (1996-2002).