Editing City manager (section)

==History==
[[File:Municipal government diagram.png|thumb|500px|Municipal government diagram.]]
Most sources trace the first city manager to [[Staunton, Virginia]]<ref>{{Cite journal|last=James|first=Herman G.|title=The City Manager Plan, the Latest in American City Government|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400010789/type/journal_article|journal=American Political Science Review|publisher=Cambridge University Press|language=en|volume=8|issue=4|pages=602–613|doi=10.2307/1945258|jstor=1945258 |s2cid=145433051 |issn=0003-0554|url-access=subscription}}</ref> in 1908. Some of the other cities that were among the first to employ a manager were [[Sumter, South Carolina]] (1912) and [[Dayton, Ohio]] (1914); Dayton was featured in the national media, and became a national standard. The first "City Manager's Association" meeting of eight city managers was in December 1914.<ref>{{cite news |title=City managing, a new profession |url=https://archive.org/stream/independen79v80newy#page/433/mode/1up |newspaper=The Independent |date=Dec 14, 1914 |access-date=July 24, 2012}}</ref> The city manager, operating under the [[council-manager government]] form, was created in part to remove city government from the power of the political parties, and place management of the city into the hands of an outside expert who was usually a business manager or engineer, with the expectation that the city manager would remain neutral to city politics. By 1930, two hundred American cities used a city manager form of government.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Robert Bruce Fairbanks|author2=Patricia Mooney-Melvin|author3=Zane L. Miller|title=Making Sense of the City: Local Government, Civic Culture, and Community Life in Urban America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2jT_3aZGDE4C&pg=PA85|year=2001|publisher=Ohio State University Press|page=85|isbn=9780814208816}}</ref>

In 1913, the city of [[Dayton, Ohio]] suffered a [[Great Dayton Flood|great flood]], and responded with the innovation of a paid, non-political city manager, hired by the commissioners to run the bureaucracy; civil engineers were especially preferred. Other small or middle-sized American cities, especially in the west, adopted the idea.

In [[Europe]], smaller cities in the [[Netherlands]] were specially attracted by the plan.<ref>Stefan Couperus, "The managerial revolution in local government: municipal management and the city manager in the USA and the Netherlands 1900–1940." ''Management & Organizational History'' (2014) 9#4 pp: 336-352.</ref>

By 1940, there were small American cities with city managers that would grow enormously by the end of the century: [[Austin, Texas]]; [[Charlotte, North Carolina]]; [[Dallas]], [[Texas]]; [[Dayton, Ohio]]; [[Rochester, New York|Rochester]], [[New York (state)|New York]]; and [[San Diego]], [[California]].<ref>Harold A. Stone et al., ''City Manager Government in Nine Cities'' (1940); Frederick C. Mosher et al., ''City Manager Government in Seven Cities'' (1940)</ref>