The strength of a mayor -- one person who makes the day to day decisions and can have the power to make decisions and exercise authority in urgent or emergency matters. The weaknesses are arrogance and single point of failure. The mayor is only one, when a mayor makes a bad decision it is often unchecked before damage can be done. …show more content…
Perhaps 5,000 people or less.
Council-managers are found effective in medium sized communities where day to day decision making authority becomes more important. Perhaps concentrated districts of up to 25,000, and huge spread out districts of up to 1 million. This is where the "mayor" is a day -to-day manager but still must wait for council direction or approval on decisions such as hiring and firing, non-petty or non-regular expenditures, and of course all capital expenditures.
Strong mayor, weak council covers the remainder.
It is important that decision making be made in a timely fashion at the most local level, yet also the one where honest responsibility for the costs and effects of expenditures can be