Council-manager vs strong mayor
The answer
Most Americans picture a city being run the way New York or Chicago is: a directly elected mayor with real executive power. That picture is the minority case. Under ICMA's 2018 Municipal Form of Government Survey, the most recent comprehensive national data, 54 percent of US municipalities with population 10,000 or more use the council-manager form, rising to 59 percent among cities over 100,000.1 In council-manager cities, the council hires a professional, unelected city manager who runs day-to-day operations, proposes the budget, and hires and fires department heads. The mayor is typically a council member chosen to preside over meetings, with no independent executive authority. In strong-mayor cities, voters elect an executive directly: the mayor appoints and removes department heads, proposes the budget, and in many charters can veto council actions. The mechanism, not the label, determines who you actually hold accountable and how.
How it actually works
In Kansas City, Missouri, a council-manager city, the city council voted unanimously on March 27, 2025 to fire city manager Brian Platt, three weeks after suspending him with pay, following a whistleblower lawsuit that cost the city nearly $1 million.2 The mayor said the episode had damaged the city's reputation, but it was the council's vote, not the mayor's authority, that removed Platt. That sequence, council appoints, council can remove by vote, contrasts with a strong-mayor city, where residents remove an underperforming executive only by voting the mayor out at the next election or through a recall process where one exists. Separately, the Village of Maywood, Illinois placed a two-part question on its April 1, 2025 ballot asking voters whether to retain its managerial form of government or switch to a strong-mayor form,3 showing that the form itself is not fixed. It lives in the city charter, or a state's default statute, and can be changed only through a referendum.
Who holds the power
In council-manager cities, day-to-day discretion sits with the manager: budget proposals, department head hiring and firing, and operational decisions. The council's leverage is the manager's employment contract and annual performance review, exercised as a group vote, not an individual veto. In strong-mayor cities, that same discretion sits with one directly elected official, who typically also holds a veto over council votes. This changes the accountability chain. In council-manager systems, you influence the manager indirectly, through the council members you elect. In strong-mayor systems, you can vote the executive out directly.
Where you come in
- Attend the council meeting or agenda item where the city manager's contract, evaluation, or removal is discussed. Agendas are typically public days in advance. See how to speak at a city council meeting.
- Vote in mayoral elections in strong-mayor cities and in council elections in both systems, since council composition determines who hires and fires the manager.
- Watch for charter revision commissions or referenda proposing to change the form of government, as happened in Maywood, Illinois in April 2025.
- Read the city charter itself, usually posted on the city or county clerk's website, to confirm which form your city actually uses.