Lincoln Township is moving ahead with a plan to change the structure of its government.
At a Tuesday meeting, the Lincoln Township Board of Trustees voted to initiate the transition to a managerial form of government from the current supervisory form of government. This means that when longtime Lincoln Township Supervisor Dick Stauffer steps down at the end of the year, the township would go from having an elected supervisor serving as its top administrator to having a hired manager instead.
Trustee Mark Florian told us as Lincoln Township grows, it becomes more necessary to have a professional administrator running the office, free from politics.
“It eliminates the loss of institutional knowledge that potentially occurs every four years,” Florian said. “We’ve been blessed here as a township to have had a supervisor that’s had a long tenure who hasn’t left, hasn’t lost a vote. But that’s not to say that that couldn’t happen in the future. And then you run the risk of voting someone into a position because they may be the only candidate or they may be one of a small handful of candidates who lacks the qualifications.”
Those qualifications, Florian said, include managing a $12 million budget and employees.
Nearby St. Joseph Township has a managerial form of government, and Lincoln Township Trustee Deb Peterson worked there for 30 years. She told us having a hired manager was good for employees.
“It was nice having that break between the township board and the employees,” Peterson said. “It was kind of like the middle of an hourglass. It funneled up, it funneled down. We could make requests to the manager or point out things we noticed that could be improved, and we didn’t have to wait for a township board meeting to do that.”
Florian floated the idea of a transition last month, noting Lincoln Township studied the possibility thoroughly in 1994. He presented the findings of the 1994 study and said they still hold true, showing there would be benefits to having a hired manager.
Now begins a public input period before a special meeting April 19 to consider a draft organizational chart for the new form of government. The hope is to find a manager by September and make the transition in November.
The board’s vote Tuesday to proceed was unanimous.
Supervisor Dick Stauffer is running for a trustee position in this year’s election, opting to step down from the supervisor position after 20 years of filling that role.
