Jim Patrick’s tenure as Kalispell city manager came to an abrupt end earlier this month. The circumstances surrounding his firing remain murky, as Kalispell city councilors have instead chosen to explain his dismissal in the broadest terms possible, taking the high road, I suppose, in what was a likely bitter divorce.
“We just determined it was time to reach out and have someone else be city manager,” Mayor Pam Kennedy said.
The council’s decision was unanimous. Councilman Duane Larson added that it was “just an accumulation of things.”
I’ll speculate that many of those “things” happened in the last several months. The public dispute between the city and firefighters union, for example. A tight budget shortfall that resulted in cuts in several city positions, for another. And, above all, a council and city manager that appeared chronically, and severely, out of sync. Patrick, while not to blame for many of the city’s recent woes, was expected by many to take the fall.
And while it’s troubling that the council has, so far, remained vague about why exactly he was dismissed (maybe there isn’t one reason), what’s more important now is that it lays out the specifics of what it wants in his replacement.
The city manager is a unique position, in that he or she has many responsibilities of a big-city mayor, but is hired, not voted, into office. There are few so-called “strong mayors” in small towns like this one. Kennedy, who is elected at large, has little power her fellow councilors don’t. She leads the meetings, but still must put most decisions to a majority vote. It’s a solid system, with one glaring drawback: The council is responsible for appointing arguably the most powerful position in Kalispell, that of its manager. And those councilors, not voters, hold that person accountable.
The result: The general public often knows little about the person who leads its city and wields exceptional power over its budget and administrative decisions. In contrast, under a “strong mayor” system, the mayor has almost total administrative authority – but suffers the consequences at the ballot box when things go badly.
Neither form of government is perfect, but if the Kalispell City Council learns one lesson from Patrick’s dismissal it should be the need for it to act with absolute transparency about whom it may hire and why.
To its credit, the council is mostly forthcoming and its members work hard, for little or no money, in thankless positions. Yet, in some recent cases, it has continued to keep its cards a bit too close to its chest. Some meetings with business leaders over impact fees have been closed to the public. And Patrick’s firing, a decision reached in closed meeting, prompted the Daily Inter Lake to contact Montana Newspaper Association attorney Mike Meloy, who called the action, done in private, illegal.
Kalispell faces challenges typical of a growing Rocky Mountain city: transportation, zoning, housing. While the public won’t vote on the city’s next city manager, it should – through media and public forums – at least be allowed to participate in the vetting of any potential candidate.
Since we weren’t told why, exactly, Patrick was fired, we at least should be told why his replacement would do better.