ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 5, 1996 TAG: 9605060132
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
note: below
DURING a March announcement that he wouldn't seek re-election this year, Roanoke City Councilman Mac McCadden raised the question of whether Roanoke even needs an elected governing body.
Bit by bit over the years, McCadden said, council has lost the authority voters grant it to govern Roanoke and make a difference in the lives of its citizens.
Instead, McCadden went on, that power has been slowly transferred to City Manager Bob Herbert. The leader of a nonelected bureaucracy, Herbert is charged with the day-to-day operations of city government. But to council he's become much more, McCadden said.
Council routinely asks the city manager to study important issues, proposed ordinances or new projects and to advise it on the direction to take. Council nearly always follows Herbert's recommendation.
Council, McCadden was suggesting, has stopped thinking for itself. It has Herbert to do its thinking instead.
Council members say, ```Bob, you handle this. Bob, you handle that,''' McCadden explained. "We don't have the strength and guts to assume the responsibility we're elected to assume."
Herbert disputes that perception. But McCadden is not the only person who has raised the issue. conversations" about their city say they feel detached from local government.
They don't see council actively governing or soliciting opinions from residents. They've been frustrated by "runarounds" when telephoning City Hall for information or help.
``My question would be, `Who is running the city?''' Raleigh Court resident Frank Eastburn said during the March 14 conversation.
"I'm not clear, maybe it's my ignorance, but I'm not comfortable with how the city is run," Eastburn said. "Is council running the city? Is the city manager running the city?"
"Like many other people in town, I think that Bob Herbert is really running things," said Petie Cavendish, the Old Southwest neighborhood leader who moved to Tennessee last week. "Council has become a passive entity. They're waiting for staff to bring them issues. It's kind of like, right now, the tail is wagging the dog."
The current situation begs the question, "Who works for who?" Republican mayoral candidate J. Patrick Green said. "Is council merely a social club?"
Asked who she thinks is in charge, City Councilwoman Linda Wyatt raised her eyebrows and declined to answer.
"Ask me after the election," Wyatt said.
Herbert, 50, lately has found himself in a hot seat that could get hotter after Tuesday's election.
Recently, residents have turned out in large numbers to complain that their neighborhoods are being ignored. Candidates for City Council are talking publicly about people who have been waiting 30 years for a curb.
Jim Trout, a Democrat seeking a 4-year term, published and mailed 7,000 campaign brochures with photos of run-down housing, a curbless street, an old Christmas tree that wasn't picked up until March.
"Is the city meeting today's needs?" the brochure is headlined. On the flip side, it says, "now, more than ever before, it's time for our city to get back to the basics of good city management."
Carroll Swain, another Democratic contender, said he saw "a lack of accountability from the city manager on down."
Herbert has been city manager for just over 10 years. A Michigan native and decorated Vietnam War veteran, he served stints as city manager in Bowling Green, Ky., and Covington before landing the job of chief of administration and public safety in Roanoke in 1979.
He was promoted to assistant city manager in 1982 and city manager in 1985.
His salary this year is $110,000, the highest of all six council-appointed officers. If past practice is an indicator, council probably will give him a raise during budget deliberations later this week.
As city manager, Herbert receives a few fringe benefits. The city provides a large late-model sedan. Under the controversial "2-for-1" pension plan council enacted years ago, Herbert will be eligible for a pension topping $60,000 annually if he chooses to retire after his 55th birthday.
Besides the pension, city taxpayers contribute $7,500 annually for him in a separate retirement account.
Unlike that of his predecessor - the hard-charging and confrontational Bern Ewert - Herbert's style is low-key and behind the scenes.
He is solicitous of council, calling members frequently at home to chat. He tries to avoid confrontation. He works well with council appointees who lead other sections in City Hall, such as City Clerk Mary Parker; Finance Director Jim Grisso; City Attorney Wilburn Dibling; Auditor Bob Bird; and Will Claytor, director of real estate valuation.
"[Herbert] works hard for consensus," said Ted Edlich, director of Total Action Against Poverty, a regional community action agency that has butted heads with Herbert in the past. "He avoids fights. He avoids defeats. You can't blame him for that."
And rarely does Herbert seem to engage in the sort of Machiavellian scheming that former Finance Director Joel Schlanger built a City Hall reputation on before resigning in disgrace in 1993.
Herbert couldn't disagree more with McCadden and others who believe he is the power center at Roanoke City Hall.
He chalks up the belief to two things: Roanoke's council-manager form of government; and a misperception by those outside his office.
"What you see depends on where you stand," Herbert said in an interview last week. "Looking in, it may look like power. But looking out, I see it more as responsibility. And it is a lot of responsibility. ... There's a burden in that responsibility, but it's a gift in the term of the public trust that's laid on the city manager."
The issue arose briefly during a radio debate Tuesday between Mayor David Bowers and Green.
"It's important to know we have a council-manager form of government," Bowers said in response to Green's promise to be a more hands-on mayor.
While the mayor is the city's chief spokesman, "the chief executive is the city manager," Bowers said. "The manager is the one who proposes the budget, the manager is the one who is authorized to hire and fire. It's important to have an understanding of how our government works."
Salem, however, has the same government structure. Nobody disputes the control that Mayor Jim Taliaferro has exercised over its city government for years.
All of Virginia's cities have the council-manager form of government. Under it, council appoints the city manager and is ultimately responsible for his or her actions. The city manager is a hired administrator who carries out council's policies.
But inherent in the structure is a fine line that the elected body must walk - and a couple of potentially dangerous pitfalls.
In generic terms, when an elected body routinely solicits but ignores the advice of its manager, it calls into question council's own competence. After all, it hired the manager whose advice it's ignoring.
That's the gist of an argument occasionally voiced in Roanoke City Council meetings. It goes something like this: "We hired this professional to make recommendations, now let's do what he suggests."
But when a council relies totally on its manager's advice and always affirms it, the city manager becomes council's biggest constituent. Citizens may wind up feeling cut out of the decision making.
McCadden says that's what is happening.
``I think we rely on Bob in terms of everyday operation of the city totally. We rely too much on him. I don't think that's the way it should be. [One day], I told him, `You've got too much power,''' McCadden said.
"But how can you be upset with a man who has a lot of power if you let him have it? You can't fault [Herbert] for that. You have to fault yourself. Why fault a baseball player for making $8 million if the owners are dumb enough to give it to him?" McCadden added.
"It's a position that [Herbert] has grown into over time," Cavendish said. "The last few councils have not been particularly strong ones. There's no leadership there. I think you only have to sit in a council meeting and watch what happens."
What has happened frequently in the past few years is this:
Council's agenda is usually chock full of reports from the city manager on issues requiring council's approval. Each member receives a multiple-page written text on each issue.
The reports briefly sketch the subject matter, offer some background details and costs involved, and typically outline two options: "A," to take an action, and "B," to take no action.
Under each option is a short list of arguments why "A" would be good and why "B" would be bad.
Council almost invariably chooses "A."
Relatively rarely, council members raise serious questions that result in a report's being pulled from the agenda.
Raleigh Court's Frank Eastburn said the setup sounds almost rigged.
"The city manager can give a grand one-page summary to City Council and not everything is ginger-peachy, but the details are not at all" there, Eastburn said. "Council's not interested in them, for one thing. ... I shouldn't say they don't care, they're overwhelmed probably with information. But the system as it's currently concocted is not working, in my opinion."
Republican Council candidate Alvin Nash agrees.
"I think City Council needs more information," Nash said after a debate sponsored by the Williamson Road Action Forum Thursday night. "I think we need to study higher stacks of information. ... City Council needs to take a little more control of the policies and procedures to make sure [they are] council's policies - not somebody else's."
Herbert disputes that he controls the agenda, noting that it's prepared by the city clerk and that often the finance director and city attorney have their own reports listed on it.
In the past, he said, he's listed lots of options on council reports - on occasion up to 10 or 11. But council has told him it prefers fewer.
"The feedback I get from City Council is that they like those reports," Herbert said. "and they're satisfied with the quality of information in them."
Another indication of the power Herbert wields is the reluctance certain people have to talk about him publicly.
"Everybody has something to lose," said one person whose agency depends for funding upon the annual budget Herbert draws up.
"You've got a fear factor," said a board member for a local nonprofit agency. "There are plenty of people like me who feel very strongly about it who are afraid to talk. And that perpetuates the behavior."
Both would speak only on the condition that their names not be revealed.
Herbert acknowledges that some people are fearful of him or regard him as unapproachable, but he shrugs it off.
"I've had some people say that to me," he said. He contends, however, that if they try him, they'll find out it's not true.
Once they do, he says, ``people say, `I never thought that you would consider my suggestion or react like that.' There are some people who overestimate the authority of this office.''
Herbert argues that a lot of things have changed in Roanoke City government over the past few years.
Roanoke is in the midst of building a "team management" system that de-emphasizes authoritarian control by managers. Team management's supporters say it empowers employees and brings broader perspectives to decision-making.
Herbert also says council of late has been more active in directing him and the rest of the city staff. He attributes that to vision and leadership workshops run by the same University of Virginia management consultant that is helping to implement team management.
One example Herbert cites is the process the city recently ran in devising a new rental inspection ordinance. It grew directly out of recent direction from council that more citizens be consulted in governance.
The proposed ordinance prompted a clash between some angry tenants who are living in dilapidated housing and some angry landlords who fear strong government regulation. During a series of workshops, each side weighed in with changes.
Council is expected to approve the ordinance this month.
Cavendish, the Old Southwest neighborhood leader who's just moved, said she hoped Roanoke gets more government like that.
"The rental inspection ordinance is one of the first times I have seen in this city that law was truly crafted with citizen input, rather than managed citizen input," she said. "I see that shifting, and I see that as a real interesting shift. I think citizens here are going to stand up and demand more of council than they ever have before in the past."
LENGTH: Long : 240 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: WHO'S IN CHARGE?by CNB``My question would be, who is running the city? It's not clear.
Maybe it's my ignorance, but I'm not comfortable with how the city
is run. Is council running the city? Is the city manager running the
city?''
Frank Eastburn
``I can tell you for up to just a few [years] ago this fellow
that was head of the auditing department, he was running the city
... and they set the thing on a gyro and of course the midshipman's
as steady as you go.''
Ernest Reynolds
``There was a street sign [pointing the wrong way]. I kept
calling and nobody came to see about it ... I told them the sign
[was hurting former Mayor Noel Taylor's church]. Within five
minutes, the sign was changed.''
Geneva Johnson
``You can make seven calls before you can get someone to come and
get graffiti off the bridge by my business. I know that if you don't
nip graffiti in the bud, then it's all over everything. But I was
made to feel like I was demanding.''
Pamela Corcoran
4 color headshots of Eastburn, Reynolds, Johnson and Corcoran KEYWORDS: POLITICS CITY COUNCIL