Panel: Camas should govern by council-manager

An ad hoc citizens committee has recommended that the city of Camas transition to a council-manager form of government with an elected mayor, arguing the change would provide greater long-term stability, professional administration and accountability as the city continues to grow.

The committee members — former Camas mayors Nan Henriksen and Ellen Burton, former Camas city councilors Greg Anderson and Don Chaney, and Camas residents Dan Duringer, Kim Sogge and Terry Wiener — presented the conclusions of their study during the Camas City Council’s June 1 workshop session.

Camas currently operates under a mayor-council form of government, in which the elected mayor acts as chief executive and administrator of the city. The recommended council-manager government would retain seven elected council members, with the mayor serving as an at-large elected position and a city manager hired by the council acting as chief executive officer.

“We are not here because something is broken,” Henriksen said. “We are here because Camas is growing, and great communities plan their governance for where they are going, not where they are or where they have been.”

Anderson told the councilors the committee examined four government forms — strong mayor, mayor-council, council-manager with an elected mayor and council-manager with a council-appointed mayor — and outlined the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Henriksen presented the majority report, highlighting the council-manager form’s benefits. She said Camas has outgrown its current structure, needs a more professional and stable governance model to deliver on its strategic goals, must proactively reduce long-term risk, and is at the ideal moment to make that change.

“The council-manager model is what top-tier municipal professionals seek out,” she said. “The most effective and most experienced city managers go to cities where they have clearly defined authority, report to a collective body and are evaluated on professional performance standards. Our current form of government is not attractive to them, sorry to say. Camas should be positioned to compete for that caliber of administrative leadership.”

Henriksen said the council-manager style of governing would also benefit the mayor.

“This actually frees up the mayor to focus on vision and leadership and interfacing with the citizenry rather than internal people management,” Henriksen said.

Henriksen suggested placing a measure on the November ballot and conducting a robust community engagement process beforehand.

“The best time to make a governance structure change, in the majority’s estimation, is now,” she said. “Waiting for a problem or crisis means making changes reactively — more expense, more disruption and more pain.”

Committee members Chaney and Duringer opposed a change to a council-manager form, citing the current system’s success and the need for broad public engagement.

“Camas should not abandon the current mayor-council, strong-mayor form of government without a compelling demonstration that the existing system is failing, because the evidence shows quite the opposite,” Chaney said. “This hybrid governance model combines professional management with direct voter accountability through the mayor as an elected executive and has served the city well for nearly 40 years.”

Councilors stopped short of endorsing or rejecting the recommendation, instead focusing their questions on transparency, accountability, public trust and community engagement. They asked for more time to determine next steps, with their next conversation scheduled for their July 6 workshop, said Bryan Rachal, the city’s director of communications and public affairs.

“I think we all agree that we should engage the public as much as possible and that takes a lot of strategy and work,” Councilor Mahsa Eshghi said. “But first, I believe we have to decide if we want to proceed, because if we don’t really want to go with council-manager, then there’s no reason to spend our energy and resources for public engagement. My suggestion is we determine that sooner rather than later to give us more time to engage the public and understand what they want and determine a good time to put it on the ballot if they do want this.”

The council approved Mayor Steve Hogan’s request to create the committee March 2. The city explored the change in 2002 and 2018 but ultimately did not move forward.