By Barbara Zivica

Under the California Constitution, as in most states, there are two basic forms of city government. The “charter city” has a degree of self-determination and executive powers. Formed by the citizens by a specific charter, they are generally independent of the legislature and have direct control over local affairs. (There are a total of 477 cities in the state, 105 are chartered.)

Antioch is a general law city. General law cities are limited by existing law in the Government Code and acts of the legislature. While all cities have a technically nonpartisan elected city council, there are two basic forms of general law cities. Seventy five percent of cities, including Antioch, have a professional administrative head e.g. city manager, city administrator, who directs day to day operations and has executive powers, while the city council sets policy by ordinances, usually generated by staff.

There are also two types of mayoral forms: 1) The strong mayor system where the mayor acts as the executive head of government. The strong mayor system is most common in charter cities such as Oakland and San Francisco. 2) The “weak mayor” system where mayors can be appointed by council or elected. These mayors serve primarily as a figurehead. They often run the council meetings, but are otherwise equal to the council members. This is the type of mayor system Antioch has which is why

I’m wondering why newly elected, newly retired Mayor Wade Harper has decided he needs to move in and occupy an office at city hall.

From the looks of it, Harper may want to “micromanage” far more than Freitas did or else he doesn’t comprehend how limited a mayor is in a General Law City like Antioch.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 14th, 2013 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.