A group of Brooklyn Center residents pushing to have a full-time mayor has submitted a petition requesting that voters get a chance to decide in November whether they want to change how the city is governed.
The north metro suburb's Charter Commission forwarded the petition this week to the city clerk, who will now begin verifying the 1,103 signatures collected over the past few months by the group Citizens for a Full-Time Mayor.
"The people we elect should be the ones to lead us," said Joe Mason, a spokesperson for the group. "We believe the mayor should be in charge of the city. Every four years we'd have the opportunity to go to the poll and make a change. We can't do that with the city manager."
Brooklyn Center, which has a population of about 32,000, has a form of government like other similarly sized suburbs in which the City Council oversees the city manager, who is tasked with running the city. Proponents of the full-time mayor idea have cited the fact that the city manager is an appointed position without term limits — and the current city manager, Reggie Edwards, lives in Mankato.
"We have a role that pays six figures annually, makes decisions about taxes and other items that do not affect them or their neighbors, and can be in this role indefinitely," Mason said. "This does not give the people of Brooklyn Center much say over what happens in their city. Only an elected official should have that kind of power."
Mayor Mike Elliott, who is up for re-election this year, has said he favors the full-time mayor idea. In the aftermath of the 2021 police shooting of Daunte Wright and the civil unrest that followed, the City Council voted to give authority over the Police Department to the mayor's office. Before that, only the city manager could fire members of the department.
The City Council subsequently fired City Manager Curt Boganey, who'd been with the city since 2005, and Elliott appointed Edwards to the position.
"We have an unelected person who can hire or fire anybody in the city, and often nobody hears about it," Elliott said during a mayoral candidate forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters last month. "There are examples of thriving communities all around us where people get to decide who runs the city: the mayor. Whoever is in the position should be answerable to the people of Brooklyn Center."
But one of Elliott's mayoral challengers, sitting City Council Member April Graves, disagrees.
"The consensus of five different people would be better than the direction of one, especially one who does not have the knowledge of how the city runs," she said during the candidate forum. She said a city manager has relationships with staff and is in a better position to make assessments than the mayor alone.
Another challenger, Laurie Ann Moore, is also opposed to the idea.
"Your city staff are your assistants," she said. "They are the experts."
If voters approve amending the city charter, Brooklyn Center would operate much like Minneapolis and St. Paul, where the mayor's job is full time and includes responsibilities such as proposing the city's budget and supervising departments — duties that currently fall to the Brooklyn Center city manager.
Brooklyn Center's governmental structure has been in place since 1966. The city is considered a "home rule charter city," which means citizens can adopt any form of government and modify the charter.
The effort to change from the current city council-city manager form of government to one in which the city's primary leader is elected by the voters began in 2019, Mason said. At that time, citizens concerned about the decline in the inner-ring suburb's economic base, housing and property values began contemplating how to make a change.
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic stalled those efforts, Mason said, but Wright's killing reignited them. After that, "we were more convinced that our city need a full-time mayor committed to the job full time," he said.
The group is facing a tight timeline to get the amendment placed on the ballot.
Citizens for a Full-Time Mayor collected more than 1,100 signatures this summer, well above the 886 needed. State law requires the number of signatures equal 5% of the total votes cast during the most recent state general election.
The group submitted its petition to the Charter Commission on July 12. But the commission, charged with relaying the petition to the city clerk, delayed forwarding it until this week, said Paul Bosman, an attorney representing the citizens group who stepped in to facilitate the process.
The city now has 10 days to certify signatures and ensure the petition meets legal standards. If there are errors or discrepancies, the city can return the petition to the citizens group, which then has 10 days to remedy them. The city would then have another five days to certify the petition, and forward it to the City Council to craft language to appear on the ballot.
That action must be completed by Aug. 26.
"We are hopeful and optimistic" about getting it placed on the ballot, Mason said. "We believe in this day and age that a representative democracy is important and that somebody elected and accountable to us is in charge."
