Waxhaw has a Council-Manager form of government, in which the council/board hires a Town Manager to oversee the day-to-day operations of the town. The various department heads and their employees ultimately report to the Town Manager, who serves at the pleasure of the Waxhaw Board of Commissioners.
You might think Waxhaw is a pretty small town, but North Carolina has a lot of much smaller towns that tend to use the Mayor-Council form of government. In a Mayor-Council government, the Mayor and council members are much more involved with day-to-day operations. This form of government makes more sense for smaller towns because they don’t have as many town employees, so there is a need for their elected officials to help with the workload. The Mayor-Council government comes in two flavors, the “Strong Mayor” and the “Weak Mayor”. Since Waxhaw doesn’t use this form I won’t go into more detail, but in North Carolina the Mayor-Council governments tend to embrace the “Weak Mayor” model (as depicted in the image below).
Waxhaw had a Mayor-Council government until 2005, when it was changed to Council-Manager. As Waxhaw grew, it made sense to make this change. Some have expressed concerns about the fact that the Town Manager is not directly accountable to the voters, as the council is in the Mayor-Council form, but as long as the voters keep the Waxhaw Board of Commissioners accountable they will in turn keep the Town Manager accountable.
During the election last year, there was some discussion about whether the responsibilities of Waxhaw’s Mayor are “full-time” or not. Clearly they are not, and that’s a good thing. The Founding Fathers of this nation envisioned a system in which everyday citizens could temporarily serve as elected officials without being financially dependent on the position. The ability to easily return to one’s previous vocation reduces the pressure to stay in office as a “career politician”. If an elected office demands full-time attention, it also reduces the pool of possible candidates because few can afford to take the risk of quitting a stable job to take on a job that may only last for one term of office.
Here in Waxhaw, we are fortunate to have a form of government that does not present onerous barriers to citizen participation in elected positions.
