Three Charleston City Council members voiced concerns Tuesday about a lack of communication from Mayor William Cogswell on big decisions, saying they felt city processes — and city council itself — were being ignored.
The majority of the discussion during Tuesday’s council meeting revolved around the quiet rollout of a new brand mark for the city in August, which council members at the time said came as a surprise. On Tuesday, council member William Dudley Gregorie said he first learned about the new brand in the City Paper’s Aug. 12 article.
“Unfortunately, a lot of things I’m learning that’s going on in our city, I learn about it through the newspaper,” Gregorie said. “Particularly on things that I should know about. [The new brand] generated a lot of questions in my district, in terms of, ‘Where did it come from? Did council have input?’ And I’m embarrassed to tell them that I had never seen it before.”
He isn’t alone.
“My biggest problem is … things coming in the paper before council has a chance to act on it or even know about it,” council member Robert Mitchell said during the Oct. 8 meeting. “I have my constituents texting me asking what the devil is going on, and you know what I tell them? ‘I don’t know. Call the mayor.’”
New brand mark impacts tradition
While several council members agreed that communication surrounding the new brand mark’s rollout was the problem, it also didn’t help that the new brand seemed to some to be evidence of the city moving away from its historic roots.
“I’m a preservationist. I’m a traditionalist,” Gregorie said. “I think we need to protect our [overall] brand at all costs. I’m just now sure how we got to the need to change the brand, particularly a brand that’s No. 1 in the country in terms of travel destination.”
Cogswell denied that the new logo, which is based on the city’s seal, was part of a rebranding strategy.
“This is in no way, shape or form intended to be a rebranding of any sort,” he said at the meeting. “I, too, am a preservationist and traditionalist and want to make sure the seal remains the seal of Charleston.”
But the city’s communications director previously told the City Paper differently. Spokesperson Deja McMillan said in August that the new brand mark was being used as a sort of “placeholder” logo for unofficial use, while a larger rebranding project was “a ways away.” The image can be spotted currently on city vehicles.
“It just points toward what we’re wanting to do overall with this administration, which is to modernize and streamline how we do things,” she said in the Aug. 12 report, adding that involving council on rebranding decisions is a goal for future efforts, but that getting something digital now rather than later was a bigger priority.
But Cogswell said on Oct. 8: “I don’t consider this a rebranding. If you want the feathers and you want more lamp on there, we can do that.”
Mitchell and council member Caroline Parker also spoke against the idea of rebranding the city.
“This is the second oldest city hall in the United States of America,” Parker said. “That has to mean something. This does feel like a rebranding. … I think it’s confusing. We are the City of Charleston, and I think the best way to respect that is to keep the current feel.”
A larger trend
Gregorie said decisions being made by the mayor’s office without the input of council was a part of an ongoing problem with city leadership.
“I think it is very important for us to be honest with ourselves,” he said. “There is an issue here with council being caught not knowing what’s going on. I don’t like it. It’s got to get better … because it’s embarrassing.
“I am not the only one that has that concern,” he added. “I’m the one who put it out there, but many of us have the same concern because we talk amongst ourselves about how we’re being left out and about the appearance of [Cogswell] usurping the authority of this body. That’s how it’s coming off to me, and I’m very uncomfortable with it.”
Gregorie pointed to the mayor’s new organizational flow chart as a major point of disagreement. The new chart, which demonstrates how authority and power flows through the city government, puts the mayor on the same level as council, but Gregorie said that isn’t how it’s supposed to run.
“The administration has a reporting requirement to this body,” he said. “The administration reports to council.”
Charleston historically has been a strong-mayor form of government in which the mayor directly oversees several branches of city operations. Under the new chart, the mayor directly oversees only three people, including his chief of staff, who oversees several offices that previously reported directly to the mayor.
While the chart demonstrates a shift of authority from the mayor toward a chief of staff, Gregorie said in practice, it seemed that the mayor has pooled more power into his office, away from council.
“I have been told [by city staff] that process is not important, results are,” he said. “I found that insulting.”
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