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Voters in Irmo will decide this November whether they want to change their form of government.
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In a specially called meeting on Tuesday, Irmo Town Council adopted the question voters will be asked when they go out to vote for governor, U.S. senator and other offices on Nov. 3. Voters in the town will have a simple yes-or-no choice when asked, “Shall the Town of Irmo change its form of government from council form to council-manager form?”
Tuesday’s meeting was called so that the town could meet the deadline to get the question to both Lexington and Richland counties’ election commissions in time for the potential change in government to make this year’s ballot.
Leaders of the suburb just northwest of Columbia describe the change as getting the town’s official form of government lined up with how the town actually operates.
“The reality is we have operated as council-manager forever, longer than I’ve been involved with the town,” Mayor Bill Danielson told The State.
Under Irmo’s current council form of government, the five-member town council as a whole is tasked with overseeing town operations, from preparing the municipal budget to hiring and firing town staff. But in practice, the council has over time delegated most executive authority to its town administrator.
That post is now held by Jim Crosland, who came to Irmo last year after previously serving as Cayce’s city manager. Under that city’s council-manager form of government, a professional town manager oversees the daily operations of municipal government and acts as the principal link between staff and the elected council.
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Crosland said he quickly noticed the discrepancy in how Irmo was actually run versus its formal setup.
“We’re registered as a council form of government, and that gives the mayor some specific duties and responsibilities, but it’s mostly council,” Crosland said. “Town employees report to council, council prepares the budget, it oversees town operations. That’s not how we’re run. We have ordinances that specify the town administrator oversees this and that. All the ordinances relate back to council-manager, so I said ‘We need to do one or the other.’”
State law requires that before a town or city can change the way its government operates, voters have to approve the change in a public referendum. In South Carolina, the town can either operate as a council form of government with the town council as a whole in charge; a council-manager form of government is where the town manager runs things under the council; or a mayor-council form where a “strong” elected mayor is the town’s chief executive.
Town officials stress that Irmo’s 12,000 residents won’t see any difference day-to-day in how the town is run, because effectively nothing will change. Now the town just needs to launch an education campaign to inform voters to approve the measure.
“We will do a huge information push,” between now and election day, Crosland said. “We’ll have public get-togethers at the municipal center where, any questions people might have, we’ll go through.”
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