March 15, 2007

Website http://www.jgclark.net

JOHN G. CLARK FOR MAYOR

Platform and Information
I am John G. Clark and I am running for Mayor of the City of Columbia.
Today, I am going to talk about what I believe. I hope that you believe in the same things and
will vote on April 3 to elect a Mayor and City Council that wants to take back control of and
responsibility for governing the City of Columbia.
I believe that we are all in this together. We are all Columbians; we will all thrive, together, or
we will all just get by, together.
I believe in citizen participation/engagement in the public decisions that affect our lives and I
believe that government should facilitate that participation/engagement.
I believe the council-manager form of government is the best combination of citizen control
and professional administration for the City of Columbia at this time. In this form of
government, the council, not the city manager, should be the governing body of Columbia.
"Article I, Section 2. Form of Government.
The municipal government provided by this charter shall be known as the "councilmanager government." Pursuant to the provisions of this charter and subject only to the
limitations imposed by the state constitution and by this charter, all powers of the city shall be
vested in an elective council, hereafter referred to as "the council," which shall enact local
legislation, adopt budgets, determine policies, and appoint the city manager, who shall
execute the laws and administer the government of the city."

I believe the City Council should take an equal leadership role with the City Manager and staff
in developing and making policy for the City government.
I believe this form of government can be the kind of government that we want - representative,
effective, accountable, inclusive, equitable, transparent, and responsive. (All but the first term
in this description are taken directly from the goals of the Structure Sub-Topic Group of the
Governance/Decision-making Topic Group of the current Visioning Project.)
I believe the council side of our council-manager form of government is broken. I believe
the City Council has not been living up to its Charter responsibilities for quite some time. I
believe the City has lost control over most everything for which it has a responsibility to its
citizens. I believe the council has abdicated its Charter responsibilities to make policy and, by
its in action, has asked the City Manager to both make the vast bulk of policy (mostly by de
facto means) for the city government as well as administer the government of the city. For the
council-manager form of government to work well for Columbia, we need a competent,
professionally trained city manager to administer the City government on a day-to-day basis
and we need a City Council that wants live up to its responsibilities under the City Charter to
govern the City of Columbia.
1

I do not believe the current mayor and council want the Council to do the job the City Charter
requires. Former Councilperson Brian Ash accurately described the role the City Council has
chosen to take for many years. In a Missourian article in May, 2004 (possibly unpublished), he
said the City Manager and City Staff is a very professional group that handles most
of the citys actual work.
Ash elaborated that the council is a group of unpaid
volunteers that exists to mainly give final approval on many projects, and offer some
direction on various policy decisions.
I think the current City Manager-council process works quite well, Ash said.
In bad news/good news format:
The bad news - The council side of our council-manager form of government is broken. As
a result, the City government faces a crisis of legitimacy because the current government Council and staff - do not meet the standards listed in the Visioning Project. They are not
sufficiently representative, effective, accountable, inclusive, equitable, transparent, and
responsive.
The good news - I believe that a Council that wants to fix our council-manager form of
government - that wants to fix our governance problem - can do so - if it wants to. I believe
that the Council can catch up on 20-30 years of un-done work in 3-5 years, if it wants to.
With respect to the issues of economic growth and employment, I believe the City (and
County) should be guided by the three Es of true smart growth - sustainable economic (not
necessarily population) growth, environmental responsibility, and equity.

I am running for Mayor to ask the voters of Columbia

to elect a Mayor and City Council that wants to take
back control of and responsibility for governing the
City of Columbia.
________
If I am elected I will have several suggestions for my fellow Council members for how the
Council can take back the control and responsibility for governing the City of Columbia and
take an equal leadership role with the City Manager and staff in developing and making policy
for the City government. To make itself more representative, more responsive, and more
effective, the Council should:
1.

Take control of its own agenda, workload and workflow; look at is voting processes; use
committees of Council members to divide the workload of developing in-depth
understanding of issues it must address;

2.

Ask the voters to increase the number of wards, to increase the size of the Council, and to
provide a modest stipend to Council members. The Council should approve other
supports, such as office space and staff assistance for its members;

3.

Increase the role of, and support for, City Boards and Commissions by providing them
with modest budgets and support staff for their meetings and activities, by inviting them to
initiate policy recommendations within their subject areas, by meeting with them in work
sessions at least once a year, and by requiring them to submit reports directly to the
Council without staff commentary or interference. These groups are advisory to the
Council;

4.

Dramatically increase support for neighborhood associations to represent all

neighborhoods in Columbia and to function as advisors to Council members and the
Council;

5.

Increase accountability of the City administration to the City Council and the public by
exercising meaningful oversight over the City manager and staff without interfering in the
day-to-day administration of the city government by:
Establish a City Council Audit Committee. The Council has too long delegated away this
core responsibility of the governing body of the municipal corporation of the City of
Columbia.
Make itself the standing search committee to work with the City Manager in recruiting
and hiring all department heads. The Council would function as the search committee;
the City Manager would decide to hire.
Require the City Manager formally to solicit performance evaluations from all City
Councilpersons on the performance of all department heads as a part his/her annual
performance evaluations of department heads. The City Manager will then have input
from the Councilpersons when she/he does the performance evaluations.

________________
John Garvin Clark, CPA, JD - Brief Bio
Mr. Clark is in his early sixties. He grew up in Alexandria, VA and Ferguson, Missouri. He has
attended Yale College, Washington University, University of Missouri-St. Louis, and the
University of Missouri-Columbia. He holds degrees from UMC in Accountancy and Law. He
has lived in Columbia since 1968 when he moved here to attend the University.
Mr. Clark is a CPA, an attorney, and an experienced community developer. As a CPA, he
specialized in the taxation of individuals and small businesses. As an attorney, he specializes
in advising and representing small tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. As a community
developer, he specializes in helping groups find their shared visions and acting to realize them.
He currently is employed by KOPN 89.5 FM as Financial Officer.
Since 1993 he has devoted his energies to facilitating citizen participation in all aspects of civic
life. Locally these efforts have been devoted to the North Central Columbia Neighborhood
Association and later the Columbia and Boone County Neighborhood Alliance and
Columbia/Boone County Community Partnership. He has worked with the residents of many
neighborhoods to develop their neighborhoods and to create and/or develop neighborhood
associations. Statewide he has worked for campaign finance reform and universal health care.

Additional goals for the next three years:

Determine the best way to finance City operations, improvements, and infrastructure over the
next 20-25 years by appointing a Tax Base Task Force, broadly representative of the whole
community, to study and recommend the best tax base (mixture of revenue sources). The
work of the Task Force will require outside professional assistance to investigate and analyze
possible funding sources and economic modeling to assess the effect of different mixes of
these sources. Such sources include various property taxes, sales taxes, utility and other
rates, development charges, other fees, and the use of TDDs and TIFs. The Task Force will
make its report within 6-12 months.
Create a more representative, responsive, and effective City Council by increasing the
number of wards and providing the volunteer Council members with a modest stipend and
other support and by dramatically increasing support for City Boards and Commissions and
neighborhoods as advisors to the City Council.
Plan more effectively for the public impact of private development by having the City hire the
consultants to perform needed traffic studies, storm water studies, etc. and having zoning
applicants continue to pay for the studies, as they do now.
Accelerate implementation of community policing in Columbia by increasing public
participation in the planning and supervision of police operations, including strategic planning.
I strongly support the adoption of a proposal for a civilian review board along the lines
proposed by the citizens group, Boone County Concerned Citizens, to move Columbia toward
real community policing.
Develop and adopt an affordable housing policy and implementation strategy as part of the
Citys consolidated plan, including a definition of affordable housing, to guide Columbias
efforts in supporting the construction, financing, and equitable distribution of affordable housing
in Columbia.
Zoning is not enough! We need to plan, now! With the County Commission, jointly authorize
the City and County P&Z Commissions to organize and oversee growth management and subarea land use planning for the Metro Planning Area (about 210 square miles including
Columbia) utilizing the citizen/stakeholder involvement process that has been developed by
the City P&Z Commission to assure broad based participation. This effort will utilize the
support of both P&Z staffs as well as outside consultants. Each respective P&Z Commissions
will submit the recommendations to its elected governing body for their review, revision, and
eventual adoption. These plans will provide the large-scale perspective within which to
evaluate specific annexation, zoning, and planning proposals.
Retain and attract well paying employment for/to the Columbia area for its current and future
citizens by capitalizing on Columbias natural economic advantage of location as well as its
person-made advantages of a large, well-trained, but underemployed workforce, large
research university, and high quality of life.
With respect to the issues of economic growth and employment, I believe the City (and
County) should be guided by the three Es of true smart growth - sustainable economic
(not necessarily population) growth, environmental responsibility, and equity.
Increasingly we see attention paid two the first two Es, often at the expense of the third.
This is unacceptable as a matter of social justice and as a matter of achievement of the
first to Es. We cannot have sustainable economic growth and be environmentally
responsible if we are not decreasing the economic, social, educational, and other
inequities in Columbia.