Is Fullerton’s Mayoral Rotation a Barrier to Civic Engagement?

So Fred Jung has again been appointed mayor of Fullerton, despite the city’s seemingly endless string of multimillion-dollar budget deficits and sundry wanderings through the financial wilderness.

For smaller cities with financial woes such as Fullerton (pop. 140,000), this repetition is embarrassing and counterproductive.

California’s city councils are officially non-partisan andFullerton — being a common law city with a “weak mayor” city manager structure — is no different.

That means mayors in cities like ours are largely ceremonial officeholders who usually rotate among those council members interested in the job, regardless of political preferences. It doesn’t take a Democrat or Republican to cut the ribbon on a new bike trail, just someone willing to hold the scissors.

In Fullerton, a city council member is a part-time position that pays $9K, and Jung recently earned $4,200 per year for additional work. For some reason, Fullerton adds a pension and spends $16K for His Honor’s health insurance. In other words, Mayor Jung’s statutory salary and extra pay are actually fringe benefits.

Most similar cities hire well-compensated professional city managers and appoint ceremonial mayors as recognition of dedicated public service, collegiality, and community leadership. As one of perhaps 5 or 7 council members, small city mayors in California are essentially the face of their cities for a year or two every 5 or 10 years.

By failing to regularly rotate the mayor’s job, the Fullerton council is dissuading the public from running for council seats. Why bother running if there is no hope of ever presiding over the city council meetings, setting meeting agendas, and for a year having a highly visible mayoral pulpit for community issues?

But there is another effect when re-appointing mayors in cities that use council districts, as does Fullerton: In many ways, subtle and not, mayors can sway policy and attention toward their districts in both council meetings and when serving as members or speakers at sundry city and multi-jurisdiction boards. In Jung’s case, the affluent northwestern council district of Fullerton seems to permanently enjoy this side benefit.

It’s not like our city council covers itself in glory: Consider the on-again, off-again licensing of cannabis retailers, which by itself could have solved the budget deficit problem. The chronically understaffed police and fire departments, including firefighters who were begging to be merged into the county fire authority. The end of a fire cooperation agreement with Brea, despite the fire danger on Fullerton’s northern boundary. Banning newspaper distribution from city property, except for a tiny corner of the library.

There are several unwholesome reasons why a California general law city the size of Fullerton might stick to one mayor year after year, for better or for worse:

1) The mayoral job is seen as toxic or no-win, especially if annual budget deficits appear intractable. Not many people want to be mayor on the morning a city files for municipal bankruptcy.

2) The pensions and benefits in place for part-time mayors or regular council members, though modest, can encourage incumbents to continue in office so as tomaximize fringe benefits. A lifetime pension for a part-time elected job is an obligation the city must guarantee decades after elected officials leave office; this is not a good idea when a city is modestly sized andfacing a nearly $10 million budget deficit.

3) Council members may be motivated to help the incumbent mayor for such prosaic reasons as political aspirations, raising campaign donations, etc., or as a quid pro quo for difficult council votes. Instead of collegiality, councils can descend into partisan bickering that solves nothing.

4) Some council members may simply not care, be frustrated, or be so hopelessly partisan that even a ceremonial job doesn’t attract more than one volunteer.

I won’t venture to guess which, if any, of the above reasons apply to Fullerton.

There is no doubt that serving on a city council is necessary and honorable work, and no small effort for those who do it well. But unless Fullerton adopts a city charter, our mayor should be rotated at regular intervals for the common good of all of the city’s council districts.

I once lived in a New England town where there were Democratic and Republican tree wardens (don’t ask) and constables. I asked the town clerk what a constable did, and she said she had no idea, but that there was never a shortage of candidates.

Better too many candidates than too few. Alas, these days, for Fullerton, there seems to be just the one.

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