Henderson history: Foreshadowing of 1949 anticipated city manager by 17 years

Interest in the city manager form of government sputtered out in 1949 because of nostalgia about the old Henderson City Council. It wouldn’t be resurrected until 1963.

The idea of a city manager apparently had been brewing for some time, but The Gleaner first took notice of it in the issue of March 5, 1949, when Assistant Attorney General Walter C. Herdman responded to a request by local attorney John Palmore.

Palmore, who would later become chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, had written to Herdman on behalf of a group of local citizens interested in changing Henderson to the city manager form of government. Herdman’s opinion said, in essence, that a mayor and two commissioners would continue to be elected, but their duties would change if a city manager were hired.

The commission would continue to adopt ordinances, set policy, and levy tax rates, while the city manager would be the city administrator charged with navigating the roadmap laid out by the commission.

Under the commission form in use at that time each of the three members had administrative powers over certain segments of city government. A full-time city manager, in taking the grand overview, theoretically could be more efficient than three part-time members of the city commission.

Herdman’s opinion said all non-elected city employees would still be under civil service protection when the city manager took control, but they would be without specific jobs. “This would not mean a wholesale firing of city employees. Rather, it would give the city manager a free hand in deciding what jobs and offices are necessary for the most efficient operation of the city.”

Kentucky cities that already had managers at that point were Lexington, Newport, Covington, Paducah, Hazard, Nicholasville, and Corbin.

Hecht Lackey, owner of WSON radio, was one of the community leaders heading the push for a city manager. The Gleaner of March 9 reported he had talked to the Foreman’s Club about it; the same issue carried a story about the Paducah city manager coming to speak to the Henderson Rotary Club in a couple of days.

Victor A. Hobday was the Paducah city manager and his appearance at the Rotary club was covered in the March 11 Gleaner. He drew a comparison to a large corporation, where the stockholders elect a board of directors who, in turn, appoint a general manager.

“The voter is not asked to pass on the administrative ability of the mayor and commissioner,” he said, but rather on where each candidate stood on matters of general policy.

An important advantage of the system, he said, is that it gave the mayor and commissioners a chance to truthfully say they have no authority to hire or fire. A manager will consider ability and intelligence, while members of the city commission are more likely to let political considerations hold sway when hiring employees.

Andrew P. Sights was the sole commission member to attend Hobday’s talk, but other city officials who attended included the city prosecutor, the light plant superintendent, the city assessor, the city clerk, and the fire chief.

The Committee for Henderson and Henderson County had for several years been seeking ways to improve the community and the March 27 Gleaner noted it had appointed a subcommittee to investigate the pros and cons of a city manager. Lackey was the chairman.

Francele Armstrong, in her Gleaner column of March 27, considered formation of the subcommittee a good start. “We do not feel that the public in general knows enough about the question, for or against, to be qualified to express an opinion at this time.”

W.G. Schoepflin, another Gleaner columnist, provided some pushback in The Gleaner of April 3. He was beginning his journalistic career when Henderson adopted the city commission form of government in 1920. A city council composed of a mayor and 12 council members -- three from each of the four wards -- had made for some interesting times, he noted. “Those were rip-snorting days, and they still stand as some of the best history of Henderson.”

But Henderson of 1949 had many problems and he wondered whether “we might have moved along too fast…. A good mayor and 12 good councilmen can bring this city back and it is the only way it can be brought back.

“You can check manager plans around the world and you will find that 95 percent of them are not successful” in that there is “more wrangling going on” there than in places with other types of government.

Schoepflin came back in his April 13 column to note he had received “plenty of favorable comments on the idea of going back to the councilmanic form of government….

“I am sure that if the people who are sponsoring the idea of a city manager … would put their efforts behind the councilmanic form that it would go over easy. I am just as sure that the city manager form of government would not carry in Henderson.”

Little more was published in The Gleaner about a city manager through the end of 1949. But there was a little bit of talk about reverting to the city council form of government. A mass meeting on the subject was held at the courthouse Sept. 5

Petitions to place the matter on the ballot were circulating, according to The Gleaner of Sept. 8 Marvin Adcock was quoted in that story saying the group would not be opposed to a city manager if the position were combined with the councilmanic form of government.

“Earlier in the summer a group met and discussed the matter of circulating a petition” for a manager form of government, the story said, but “this proposal never got beyond the planning stage.”

The effort to place the councilmanic question on the Nov. 5, 1949, ballot was unsuccessful.

But the issue did not die. Between 1953 and 1958 there were four separate attempts to revert to the city council form of government. In 1953 the effort was defeated at the polls by just under 500 votes. The question came back in 1954, when it lost by an even closer margin -- 192 votes. In 1956 it lost by 577 votes. And in 1958, the last time it was on the ballot, it was defeated by 584 votes.

On Nov. 8, 1962, Gleaner reporter Harry Williams wrote that city government "has drifted into government by crony," noting that the city treasurer was reading his own gas meter, and the cemetery supervisor was allowing an employee to reap crops planted on city land.

The Henderson Chamber of Commerce did a study, which concluded the city would be better served by the city manager form of government, which was adopted by the voters more than two to one Nov. 5, 1963 and went into effect at the beginning of 1966. That vote also approved adding two more seats to the Henderson City Commission.

The Gleaner’s last mention about the 1949 foreshadowing of a city manager was eight words; it appeared in the editorial of Sept. 21.

“Running a sizable city like the new Henderson is a 24-hour-a-day job. If we keep on growing, we might have to have a night mayor.

“And wasn’t something said about a city manager?”

100 YEARS AGO

At 12:25 a.m. an exhausted Blanche Gibson burst through the door of the Gleaner-Journal and excitedly told the staff that Roosevelt Peters had shot her husband, Strother Gibson, for absolutely no reason, according to The Gleaner of March 11, 1924.

She had run to the Gleaner office all the way from Fishtown – a distance of about seven blocks. Strother had been standing in the door when he jokingly said, “I will take you home but you must not shoot me like you did your brother in law.” Peters shot him.

Strother spent about four weeks in the hospital and lost 30 pounds.

Peters pleaded self-defense when he was indicted in mid-May for “malicious shooting at and wounding another with intent to kill.” On Sept. 8 the charge was reduced to “shooting in sudden heat and passion.” He pleaded guilty and was fined $100.

50 YEARS AGO

A proposal by City Manager John Hefner that would have increased the wheel tax by $1 each year for five years was unanimously rejected by the Henderson City Commission, according to The Gleaner of March 13, 1974.

The wheel tax had been instituted as a 10-year temporary measure in 1964 but in 1973 it was extended a year. The 1974 action extended it another two years. In 1984 it was doubled from $10 annually to $20, and in 2000 it was phased out.

25 YEARS AGO

Gov. Paul Patton came to town to help celebrate the opening of the renovated Soaper Hotel, according to The Gleaner of March 11, 1999.

“With the work we’re going to be doing on the riverfront with you all, you’re beginning to make downtown Henderson a great place,” he said.

Owners of the 1924 building at that time were attorney Ron Sheffer and contractor Bruce Peters.

Readers of The Gleaner can reach Frank Boyett at YesNews42@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Henderson history: Foreshadowing of 1949 anticipated city manager by 17 years