Charleston City Council members on Tuesday explored how city leaders came to decisions and policies during the unprecedented health crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic after council member Caroline Parker, newly elected in 2021, called some measures into question at previous council meetings.
The policies themselves weren’t up for debate at Tuesday night’s council meeting, but the methods by which they were levied were.
“We should have a process moving forward,” Parker addressed other council members. “What’s written now is the administrative rules and how the mayor can carry those out … you’ve seen the last two years, you’re flying by the seat of your pants, you didn’t know what you were doing — nobody did.”
Parker pointed to certain measures, like the vaccine-or-test mandate for city employees, as examples of rules that were not voted on by council, but had tremendous impacts on the city.
“The past two years have certainly brought unforeseen challenges to our city, staff, mayor, council and citizens,” she said. “The city has reacted and pivoted as it felt it needed to during that time … As a city we already have huge staffing challenges … A vaccine mandate will further push out potential hires, and I don’t think it’s necessary with the information that continues to reveal itself regarding COVID-19.”
Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg clarified that measure, along with many other COVID-era ordinances, are no longer being enforced as the pandemic continues to recede. But, Parker said, that doesn’t mean city leaders should just move on and wait for another emergency to bring the same policymaking and procedural challenges.
“I honestly don’t think this means we move on and forget about it, I think we need to move forward and be sure we know how to handle these situations and what the process will be in the future,” she said. “This policy remains in effect and can be brought back … I certainly don’t want to be the tip of the iceberg here and push out any potential new hires.”
Council members Ross Appel and William Dudley Gregorie disagreed somewhat on the typical procedures for such measures. Appel said Charleston has always had a centralized government, with a lot of power given to the mayor. He compared his role to that of a CEO, with the council serving as a board of directors.
Dudley instead said that the mayor has always been considered just another member of council, with one vote, just like anyone else. The difference in role comes after the vote, with the mayor then having more of an administrative role.
“Once those votes prevail, the mayor has the responsibility as the head of the executive branch to carry out the mandates for council,” he explained.
Ultimately, council member Mike Seekings said, it comes down to a misunderstanding of the powers given to mayor and council in city code. He pointed to section 2-96 as numerating such powers, and said all members of council should read up on it ahead of the next conversation.
“Having this conversation is really good, but let’s have a baseline understanding of what the mayor’s powers are and what the council’s powers are and let’s go forward,” he said. “You always have after action reviews of things, and we probably need to have a little after-action review of the manner in which we handled some of these things.”
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