For students, earning their MPAs, this event was fantastic. The research presented at this event really focused on the City Manager vs. The Executive Mayor. The major conclusion was that the smaller the population, budget, and problems are, the better a strong council oriented system would work. However, as the population, budget, and complexity of the problems increase, a strong executive mayor system is best. Many reasons for this were identified in the workshop. But the most impressive one was the simplest one, that as problems and responsibilities increase, the people want to hold one person accountable and not a group of nine or so members, who can continually blame one another for what went wrong without ever identifying what they could have done wrong. This workshop reinforced many of the lessons learned in Organization Theory and Culture courses in MPA programs. As a new professional, this workshop helped me to connect the theories.
Jose Luis Irizarry, MPA
President, MPA Student Association
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.