City Manager Ted Staton is behind some of the biggest decisions that have been made in East Lansing.

Although he does not have the power to make official decisions about the city, he provides vital information about how City Council should handle everything from ordinances to its annual budget.

The city uses a council-manager form of government, where the mayor is a member of East Lansing City Council and fulfills ceremonial duties while the executive power is held by a professional manager, who is hired to serve at the pleasure of the council.

Councilmember Mark Meadows said this government was adopted shortly after East Lansing became a city almost 100 years ago.

"It was a more modern way of doing things," he said. "It was absolutely the correct thing for us to do."

In 1908, Staunton, Va., became the first community in the United States to adopt a council-manager form of government as a result of modernized political theories at the turn of the century, according to the city's Web site.

Meadows said the council-manager form of government was developed because of political corruption in larger cities.

"It wasn't in reaction to a single incident, it was just a reaction to a large number of corruption in scandals in large cities," he said. "There wasn't a well-developed civil service, and it was just developing at a national level.

"If you put it in the context of the time, this was a great leap forward. This was a national progression."

Staton said it's more beneficial to residents when the council hires a city manager rather than have them be elected because there's no guarantee a fully-qualified individual, who can manage people and money simultaneously, would be elected to the position.

"Governments our size require a real set of administrative skills to efficiently manage, in that people like me spend all of their professional and academic life managing a governmental organization," he said. "The council chooses people strictly on merit, not on the political affiliations they have.

"If ever they determine I'm not meeting their expectations of the community, they can ask me to leave."

Mayor Pro Tem Vic Loomis said he compares the council-manager form of government to the way corporations are structured.

"You have a board of directors elected by shareholders," he said. "We're council members elected by voters. They are the shareholders of the city, and council members are their board of directors. The corporate board hires the chief executive officer, and in our case we hire the city manager.

"The city's government is very effective and fits well in the public sector."

Mayor Sam Singh said the council-manager form of government is beneficial to function efficiently and to run daily operations.

"The city manager knows the ins and outs to run public works as well as dealing with financial matters," he said. "That allows the council to focus on policy direction and issues that are in the bigger picture."

Singh said the size of the city's budget and population do not warrant a form of government where the mayor acts as the chief executive officer.

"Larger cities have a strong-mayor system, and that's the right approach," he said. "There are more resources available because of the larger tax base, and you still want to have people that have a good understanding to meet the city's technical needs. I've found this an effective way to govern a city of our size."

Planning and Community Development Director Jim van Ravensway, who has worked under a council-manager form of government for 30 years, said it creates a more professional type of working environment for the city staff.

"When you have an elected mayor, like Lansing, it tends to politicize the work that you do," he said. "I don't have to worry about the politics behind the job. What residents are getting from me is a professional opinion, not a political opinion. My boss is not a politician, and that's a big difference."

Kristi Jourdan can be reached at jourdank@msu.edu.