Our first reaction on hearing that Bainbridge Islanders had voted this week to scap the city’s mayor-council form of government in favor of a city manager-council arrangement was to wonder where all this eagerness to explore new forms of goverance was in 2002.
Back then, you may remember, Kitsap residents were asked to revise the county’s charter in order to allow each of the three commissioner districts to elect its own representative rather than insisting that comissioners be voted on countywide in the general election.
Voters in heavily Democratic North Kitsap, however, successfully killed that prospect in the interest of preserving a system that has allowed our neighbors to the north to saddle South Kitsap with a commissioner who appeals to Bainbridge Island’s tender sensibilities but has twice failed win a majority in her home district.
Now the islanders want to revise their own form of government and adopt something they assume will be more respresentative and responsive?
Apparently the irony of that desire was lost on them.
Meanwhile, our second reaction was to wonder whether Port Orchard might also consider going the city manager route at some point in the future.
The mayor-council setup seems to be working fine in these parts at the moment, but with all the annexations currently on the drawing board, Port Orchard is poised to evolve from a sleepy little village into a full-fledged city — one that could conceivably one day require the services of a trained administrator rather than a collection of politicians.
The advantage of a city manager is that he or she is experienced in the day-to-day operations of a city. The disadvantage is that bureaucrats are notoriously difficult to replace compared to an elected mayor, who has to face the voters every four years.
In any case, we’ll watch with great interest how the grand experiment in transparency and responsiveness works out on Bainbridge.
It’s just a pity we can’t help out a little by forcing them to live with representatives they don’t want for a change.
