My focus is on the United States. I’m sure the job can be very different depending on the city but I realized recently that I don’t even know a general description of the job which bothered me. I’ve tried checking out my cities website and found nothing, google searches were mostly useless, even conversations with people who were in local politics didn’t clarify anything. It’s unclear why this information isn’t more readily available for most local political offices.
I know that someone has the answers and I’m hoping that my lack of progress is just a result of my bad searches or clunky conversation skills.
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Mayors are like CEOs for their city/town/municipality
They bring motions to council to vote on it, they oversee executive staffing, they make official appearances, they negotiate with other levels of government for funding. Ultimately, they are the public face of the local government
The mayor is the chief executive officer of the city’s government, as it were.
It’s traditional in US governments to break down responsibilities between legislature, judicial, and executive. Legislature and judicial branches don’t have a “top boss”, due to their nature, but the executive branch does.
All of a city’s services answer to the mayor. The mayor’s job is to make sure that the laws are enforced, the taxes are collected, the garbage is collected, the streets are maintained, etc.
Generally, a mayor is to a city as the president or prime minister is to a country. They are the chief executive of the city, with many of the same responsibilities and powers any other chief executive would have, just within the jurisdiction of their city.
How, exactly, that works out varies. Sometimes, that means they are a separate office from the city council, the way the President and Congress are totally separate. Sometimes, it means that the mayor chairs the city council similar to how a prime minister leads a parliament.
A mayor is the chief elected official of a city. He is in charge of all the departments, like utilities, police and streets.
He is elected, usually every 4 years. The mayor is in charge of the city council. The CC is made up of representatives of different areas of the city or town. The city council proposes and passes ordinances and taxes. It varies by town, but the mayor is either the tie breaker or a voting member of the council.
A city or town manager is the non elected version of the mayor and gets more into the day to day issues, whereas the mayor will be more political and focused on the macro.
According to my Facebook, and my town’s subreddit, they’re responsible for gas prices, food prices, homelessness, drug overdoses, crime rate, and structure fires
It really depends on the individual municipality. For instance, in my city, the mayor is really just a glorified ribbon cutter. The city manager is the one who actually runs things. But, that position is answerable to the city council, on which the mayor has a seat. But there are multiple types of city governance, from the mayor is nothing on one end, to the mayor runs the show on the other and everything in between.
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