ELKINS — Elkins City Council has passed two resolutions to clarify and amend sections of the City Charter and City Code that pertain to the city’s administrative officers and the mayor.

According to a memo sent to council by City Clerk Sutton Stokes, members of the city staff had identified sections of the City Charter and City Code they believed needed to be clarified to “enable the city government to fine-tune and strengthen its administration and operations.”

One of the issues brought up was that no action had been taken to reassign administrative authority to the city’s five administrative officers, the city clerk, the city treasurer, the fire chief, the operations manager and the police chief in the charter, after Elkins citizens voted to keep the Mayor-Council Plan instead of changing to the Manager-Mayor Plan in 2021, when the Elkins City Charter was modernized.

“One of the components of that charter was supposed to be the adoption of a different plan of government, the Manager-Mayor Plan,” Stokes explained to council during the Sept. 25 meeting. “So that meant that a charter was prepared to that effect, but that portion was objected to.”

West Virginia Code (8-3-2) allows municipalities, such as Elkins, to choose from one of five “plans” for the shape of a city government, and the City of Elkins has had the Mayor-Council Plan, under which the Mayor and City Council act together as both the governing and administrative authorities of the city, since 1901. 

In 2021 voters were given the option to choose the Manager-Mayor Plan for the city instead, which would have defined the City Council as the governing authority, and a new city manager position as the administrative authority, meaning the city manager would be in charge of the hiring, termination and supervision of staff, city departments and agencies.

The 2021 charter had been changed to account for the Manager-Mayor Plan being adopted; however, the plan was voted down by city residents. While the manager section was deleted from the charter, no further action was taken to properly address the powers of the five appointed administrative officers.

“I think a lot of us, without thinking about it, just thought ‘oh, there’s a section in the charter or the code that lays that out,’ and it really isn’t made plain,” Stokes said. “It’s kind of implied with the job descriptions and certain sections of code that are adapted.”

The council unanimously approved the resolution to clarify the Administrative Officers’ roles by confirming that:

The five appointed administrative officers hold full administrative authority over their respective departments and all personnel assigned by council thereto;

The officers shall be solely responsible for the appointment, termination, and supervision of employees assigned to their departments by council;

Individual elected officials shall deal with city employees who are subject to the direction and supervision of the city’s administrative officers solely through the appropriate administrative officer, except for the purpose of informational inquiries, investigations under Charter Section § 2.06, and as otherwise specifically allowed by law or Council policy.

“Clear chain of command makes organizations operate efficiently and I want to make sure those administrative officers know that we really support them because they function really well …” Fourth Ward Council member Andrew Carroll said during the Sept. 25 meeting. “… I hope the public understands that, while this seems like it’s a little bit of wordsmithing, making sure that that’s codified and organized in a clear way that they can operate brings extra efficiencies and allows them to continue the excellent job they do, serving the citizens of Elkins.”

The five administrative officers and the city attorney will have to prepare an ordinance that will “make these and related proposed amendments to Elkins City Code, to be laid before council in all deliberate haste,” according to the resolution.

The council also voted unanimously to amend the phrasing surrounding the role of the Office of the Mayor in the city charter.

“I would caption the whole topic by saying that, in my opinion, it doesn’t truly change the legal definition of how the mayors function under the ‘Mayor-Council Plan,'” Stokes told council during the Sept. 25 meeting.

In the memo sent by Stokes, he explains that the original phrasing for the definition of the Office of the Mayor’s role in the charter implied the city used the Strong-Mayor Plan. The Strong-Mayor Plan would assign independent administrative authority to a mayor, which is not what was voted on for Elkins.

“If the council or the people of Elkins want to pursue adoption of a Strong Mayor plan, let them do so following the process required by law,” Stokes said in the memo. “But in the meantime, this wording – which may cause confusion for officials, staff, and the public – should be eliminated.”

Charter Section 3.01(a) originally stated that, “The Mayor shall be recognized as the chief executive officer and head of government of the City. The Mayor shall exercise all powers and perform all duties vested in or imposed by this Charter, ordinance, general law, or rule necessarily implied therefrom to carry out the functions of the office.”

The amended section the council approved on Sept. 25 now states that, “The Mayor shall be recognized as the chief executive officer and head of government of the City. The Mayor shall exercise only those powers and perform only those duties vested in or imposed by this Charter, ordinance, general law, or other rule or order of Council. The mayor shall have only such additional powers and perform such additional duties as may be prescribed for mayors and other chief executive officers of municipalities by provisions of city, state, or federal law that are applicable to Mayors of municipalities chartered under the Mayor-Council Plan.”

“I think that clarification is really important because all of us come and go,” Fourth Ward Council member Nanci Bross-Fregonara said before the council voted on the changes. “We’re voted in, we’re here for four years and then we’re gone. Without it having something that’s in very clear language that can hold up as we come and go, mayors come and go… It’s really important to have that language to depend on and move forward as a cohesive body.”

Elkins City Council will meet again on Oct. 17 at the Phil Gainer Community Center.