LANGLEY — Accountable and effective government — plus a more powerful city council — are the big benefits of adopting the council-manager model of government, a group of outside experts said at a town meeting devoted to Proposition 1 Thursday.

Langley voters will decide in August if they want to jettison the position of an elected mayor, and instead have the city council hire a manager to run city hall.

Proponents of Prop. 1 sponsored the meeting, which featured two retired city managers, a retired city administrator and a Sammamish city councilman who has served as a council-appointed mayor as guest speakers. The foursome touted the benefits of professional management at city hall in a 150-minute session before a crowd of three dozen that touched on costs, contracts and the balance of power.

Dave Ramsay, a former city manager for Kirkland, said professional managers were accountable — primarily to the people who can hire and fire them. That’s a majority of the city council; in his case, four council members.

City managers are experts at math, he joked, because their jobs depend on it.

“Every morning when you woke up, you needed to be able to count to four. And if you did, you got out of bed and you went to work,” Ramsay said.

Don Gerend, a council member for Sammamish, agreed.

He recounted his Eastside city’s first experience with a city manager, right after the city was incorporated.

The manager bluntly told the council: “You set the policy and I run the city.”

“He lasted one year,” Gerend said.

Their next city manager knew how to create and cultivate support, and has been in the job for a decade now.

Gerend said that an elected mayor controls city staff, and if the mayor doesn’t follow the policies set by the council, there is nothing they can do about it.

Robert “Bob” Jean, the former city manager for University Place, has also worked in cities that have an elected mayor. He readily admitted he was “biased” toward the council-manager model.

He brought questions, and answers, on why professional management was necessary at city hall.

“There is a lot of discussion about what’s the role of government today, and the whole debate is going on back in Washington and the craziness back there. The question is, do we have to follow that same craziness at the local level or can we do better?”

Jean said efficient, effective and accountable governance can be found at the local level when officials choose to run their city like a business.

He likened voters to stockholders in a corporation who elect a city council to serve as the board of directors; council members then choose one of their own as a chairman, a CEO, to be mayor.

“That’s the council-manager plan,” he said.

Jean said 3,500 of 5,000 local governments in the United States use the council-manager model.

“This is not something weird,” he said.

Most new cities in Washington state have also adopted the council-manager setup, he said. It makes sense because municipalities will face increasingly difficult and more complex challenges in the years to come.

“Do you think things are going to get easier for government in the next five or 10 years?” he asked. “Is it going to be less difficult to manage in this environment?”

“This Great Recession, or this new normal we’ve been through, I think is going to throw some curve balls at us. And I think we’re going to have to be better at what we do and how we do it,” Jean said.

He added that cities that have had professional managers or administrators have better weathered the economic storm.

Jean also echoed the worry that some Prop. 1 supporters have raised: that small town Langley lacks a large pool of qualified people who can serve as mayor.

“What’s the likelihood that a community this size is going to have a whole series of people qualified to come in and deal with this increasingly complex world?” Jean asked.

“If a mayor comes in and screws up, what’s your recourse? You’ve got to wait until the next election,” he said. “How long does it take to get rid of a city manager if he screws up? Basically, 24 hours.”

Jean also said the fundamental difference between the council-manager form of government, and Langley’s council-mayor form, was the greater control the council has if there isn’t an elected mayor at city hall.

“You have a stronger council. They really have a say,” he said.

Gerend agreed, and said the council gets “shunted aside” by a mayor who has greater influence than the council as a whole. He pointed to another Eastside city, Redmond, and noted the considerable power of former Mayor Rosemarie Ives.

“She ruled the roost,” he said.

The “danger,” Gerend said, was the considerable power that an elected mayor has to control staff.

Some voters in Langley, however, are worried about a council with unchecked power.

Councilman Hal Seligson said the change would make Langley’s leadership lopsided. An elected mayor can veto legislation passed by the council, he said.

“I don’t see checks and balances,” Seligson said, adding that most cities in Washington have elected mayors in charge at city hall.

“I frankly feel that the city manager model — while it offers professionalism and has great potential — also empowers the city council,” added Langley resident Rich Frishman.

Frishman said he wouldn’t want to lose his chance to vote for the city’s mayor.

“I want to be empowered,” he said. “I don’t want the city council to be making the choice. I want to be able to have a direct vote, even if it’s only every four years.”

Frishman also asked about contracts for city managers, and said it seems likely that a city would still have to abide by what’s in an employment agreement if it tried to end a manager’s term too early.

The guest speakers agreed, and said severance packages are often written into employment contracts. The parting payments usually include three months of pay up to a full year’s salary.

Recruiting city manager candidates also carries a cost, and can run in the neighborhood of $15,000 to $18,000.

But John McFarland, a Freeland resident and retired city administrator for the cities of Renton and Tukwila, offered to do a recruiting search for free, or maybe for the cost of a lunch and dinner in town.

McFarland helped Island County find its most recent planning director, and also served as the interim director of human resources for Island County.

Jean, who has also been a city manager or administrator in four other states besides Washington, told the crowd that changing the form of government wouldn’t be a guarantee of good governance.

“It shouldn’t really be about the form of government. Good people can make a lesser form work,” Jean said.

“The people matter. Who you elect matters. And who they in turn hire … matters,” he said.