City Administrator

Baltimore voters casting ballots for mayoral candidates in the fall might not be electing the person who will run the city.Three mayoral candidates say that if elected they would hire an administrator to handle the daily operation of city government.The proposal is being pushed by candidates such as Council President Lawrence A. Bell III and former East Baltimore Councilman Carl Stokes. It is a growing trend among local governments. Across the country, 676 mayors supervise city administrators.

The Annapolis city council approved last night Mayor Dean L. Johnson's nomination of his interim city administrator to fill the $76,800 job permanently.Johnson picked Sanford W. Daily, who was Gaithersburg city manager from 1968 to 1995, for the position after the council vetoed the mayor's proposal last month to increase the city administrator's salary by $20,000.Daily has been Annapolis' interim manager since February.The Annapolis city code stipulates that the most a city administrator can be paid is $76,860.

Annapolis Mayor Dean L. Johnson has hired a retired Gaithersburg city manager to fill in as city administrator so that he can invest more time in planning his budget for the next fiscal year while the search continues for a new second-in-command.Sanford W. Daily, 58, who managed Gaithersburg from 1968 to 1995, will start Tuesday and will coordinate the search for a city administrator in addition to taking over administrative duties that Johnson assumed when Walter N. Chitwood III resigned from that position in September.

Annapolis Mayor Dean L. Johnson has appointed his spokesman as temporary city administrator after the man he selected for the job rejected it as paying too little.After an exhaustive four-month search during which he sifted through 124 resumes, Johnson said, he offered the job to an out-of-state candidate a few weeks ago.The maximum salary of $74,000, as dictated by the City Code, was not enough for the candidate.City spokesman Thomas W. Roskelly moved into City Hall yesterday to help with administrative duties while Johnson begins searching anew.

Eight months after an intensive, nationwide search selected him as Annapolis' second in command, Walter N. Chitwood III has resigned.The city's top administrator, who was in charge of daily operations, Chitwood noted family obligations and a job opportunity in the private sector for his decision -- but also said that "some of the magic is gone."Chitwood gave notice Wednesday that he intended to leave the city job at the end of this month, giving the city little time to find a replacement.

In a rare act of political sacrifice, the Annapolis city council voted unanimously last night to hand over the bulk of its power to an unelected bureaucrat charged with bringing order to an unruly municipal operation.Also, council members voted 8-1 to make it easier for voters to punish them for poor performance through special recall elections. But they killed legislation that would have prohibited aldermen from meddling in the daily operation of city affairs."With this measure, we are effectively changing the form of government we have," said Alderman Dean L. Johnson, a Ward 2 independent who plans a run for mayor.

Walter N. Chitwood III, a budget analyst at Anne Arundel Community College, was tapped by new Mayor Dean L. Johnson yesterday morning for the position of Annapolis' chief administrator.A former top aide to Robert R. Neall when Neall was county executive, Chitwood will replace John L. Prehn Jr. if the city council approves his nomination. The confirmation could come as early as Jan. 12, at the council's first 1998 meeting.Yesterday, the mayor said Chitwood's local ties to the community were a major factor in the decision.

The Annapolis city council might soon get out of the micromanagement business.The council is to vote tonight on a set of proposed charter amendments and bills that would put day-to-day government operations in the hands of a city administrator, abolish city council committees and prohibit aldermen from interfering in the city's daily operations."

In a rare act of political sacrifice, the Annapolis city council voted unanimously last night to hand over the bulk of its power to an unelected bureaucrat charged with bringing order to an unruly municipal operation.Also, council members voted 8-1 to make it easier for voters to punish them for poor performance through special recall elections. But they killed legislation that would have prohibited aldermen from meddling in the daily operation of city affairs."With this measure, we are effectively changing the form of government we have," said Alderman Dean L. Johnson, a Ward 2 independent who plans a run for mayor.

The face of Annapolis government could be changed drastically under a set of proposed charter amendments that would place day-to-day government operations in the hands of a city administrator.The proposed amendments also would give the administrator power over department heads, remove zoning decisions from the city council, abolish aldermanic committees and establish nonpartisan elections.The council has scheduled a public hearing on the amendments at 7 p.m. today."These are going to be the most important charter amendments the city has considered in three decades," said Alderman Carl O. Snowden, who wrote a column on the amendments recently in the Annapolis Times, a local weekly.

When Wayne Taylor was 16, he'd bring girls all the way from his home in Upper Marlboro to Annapolis for dates. "We'd sit on the docks and watch the boats," said Taylor, a 13-year resident of the city and now candidate for mayor. "It was more enjoyable to get away from the day-to-day process that you're used to and come here to small-town Annapolis." Since then, Taylor turned his affection for the city into a profession. He's the community engagement coordinator for the Anne Arundel Community Action Agency, a branch of a government organization that works to alleviate poverty.

Voters in Annapolis might have a chance to determine whether the city government should increase the powers of its city administrator or employ a city manager to oversee its inner workings. Political activists and some city council members are saying that voters should have the final say about what could amount to a major change to the city's governance structure. At Monday night's city council meeting, Tony Evans, a political activist and the treasurer of the city's Democratic Central Committee, said he is considering petitioning for a referendum on the issue.

Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer says talk about changing the capital city's government seems to come and go about every 20 years or so. Other City Hall veterans figure it's more like every other year - five commissions or task forces in the past 13 years - says Alderman Richard E. Israel, a Ward 1 Democrat. And Alderman Sheila Finlayson, a Democrat from Ward 4, remembers a handful of task-force reports in recent years - most of them probably shelved and gathering dust. No matter who's doing the counting, the issue is likely to dominate the City Council next few weeks as lawmakers wrangle with three proposals aimed at shaking up city government.

Annapolis Alderman Richard E. Israel is set to introduce to the city council tomorrow night legislation that would severely limit the power of the mayor to oversee city government and municipal services. The authority to hire, fire and set salaries for department heads would shift from the mayor to the city administrator, who currently oversees the day-to-day management of the departments in conjunction with the mayor. The change would restrict the mayor's role to policymaking while expanding the role of the city administrator, who is hired by the mayor.

This year, the citizens of Annapolis will celebrate the 300th anniversary of the granting of the first city charter. The charter was granted by the colonial governor, John Seymour, in the name of Queen Anne. Under the original charter, there was an elected common council. Together with a self-perpetuating board of aldermen, it selected the mayor. However, the franchise for electing members of the common council was limited. Under the republican form of government we have enjoyed since 1776, the franchise has been broadened so that we now have universal adult suffrage.

The former deputy housing secretary under Gov. Parris N. Glendening has been tapped for the newly revived position of city administrator in Westminster, Mayor Thomas K. Ferguson announced yesterday. After a five-month search, the Westminster City Council offered the job to Margaret "Marge" Wolf, 60, who also served as Hyattsville's city administrator for nine years and now manages the borough of Kennett Square, Pa. "Marge brings to this job in Westminster, Md., experience in spades," Ferguson said.

All five members of the Westminster City Council are displaying a spirit of unity, agreeing with the mayor that the city of 18,000 requires a full-time manager. That position will likely be filled, at a salary in the $100,000 range, as the council meets to trim next year's budget in a work session tomorrow night. Last week, the council and mayor sponsored an ordinance to hire a city administrator. They will vote to approve that position at their April 24 meeting. "No $25-million-a-year business would trust the management of that business to part-time officials," council member Gregory Pecoraro said during last Monday's meeting, referring to the city's annual budget.

The man integral to running the daily business of Westminster for nearly 20 years announced last night that he has been called to active duty in the Middle East. Thomas B. Beyard, Westminster's director of planning and public works since 1987, told the City Council he will depart in mid-June for a deployment based in Kuwait with the Maryland Army National Guard. Beyard, 51, who joined the Guard in 1997 after years with the Army Reserve, expects to return to his job in late 2007. Prompted by Beyard's pending departure, Mayor Thomas K. Ferguson requested last night that Westminster not only find an interim replacement for Beyard but hire a full-time city administrator - a position briefly created in 1991 that fell victim to political controversy.

The Annapolis city council considered taking the first step last night in acquiring the famed Thomas Point lighthouse, a Chesapeake landmark of bayside living that is the last screw-pile lighthouse standing in its original location. The council, which also considered a proposal to annex an Anne Arundel County property at Bywater and Woods roads and a lease for a sandwich restaurant to open at the Market House at City Dock, had yet to get to the lighthouse item as its meeting continued late last night.

A Crofton businessman and aide to former Anne Arundel County Executive O. James Lighthizer has been appointed to run the Annapolis city government. Robert Agee, 53, started work yesterday as acting city administrator, Mayor Ellen O. Moyer announced. If confirmed by the city council, Agee, who will earn $93,000 a year, will be the first permanent city administrator of Moyer's term. Moyer, who said she worked with Agee in his county role during the 1980s, said he complements a new city team with a range of talents.