On this episode, we explored the structure of city government, the reason we have the system we have, and what a different system looks like in a neighboring city. Olympia has a council-manager system of government, with a city manager to run the day-to-day operations of the city and a mayor that doesn’t have much more authority than the rest of city council. Tumwater has a mayor-council system, where the mayor has much more authority than the city council. We interviewed Holly Gadbaw, who served on the Olympia City Council for many years after it adopted the council-manager system, and Pete Kmet, the mayor of Tumwater.

Download this episode