The mayor of

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut, outside of Manhattan. It is Connecticut's second-most populous city, behind Bridgeport. With a population of 135,470, Stamford passed Hartford and New Haven in population as of the 2020 ...

, United States, is the city's chief executive.

History of the mayoralty

Before 1945, the

city charter A city charter or town charter (generically, municipal charter) is a legal document (''charter'') establishing a municipality such as a city or town. The concept developed in Europe during the Middle Ages. Traditionally the granting of a charter ...

of the City of Stamford divided the city into two separate political jurisdictions: a central city with a "

strong mayor Strong may refer to: Education * The Strong, an educational institution in Rochester, New York, United States * Strong Hall (Lawrence, Kansas), an administrative hall of the University of Kansas * Strong School, New Haven, Connecticut, United St ...

" form of government and a town which employed the traditional

town meeting Town meeting is a form of local government in which most or all of the members of a community are eligible to legislate policy and budgets for local government. It is a town- or city-level meeting in which decisions are made, in contrast with ...

form of government.Peter F. Burns, ''Electoral Politics Is Not Enough: Racial and Ethnic Minorities and Urban Politics'' (State University of New York Press, Albany, 2006), pp. 25-26. From the 1930s, reformers began seeking to change this system on the grounds that it accorded too much power to the mayor and that the separation of the town and city for some purposes but not others "was an outmoded and inefficient way to govern a modern city." In 1946, the Charter Consolidation Inquiry Commission, created by the

Connecticut General Assembly The Connecticut General Assembly (CGA) is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is a bicameral body composed of the 151-member House of Representatives and the 36-member Senate. It meets in the state capital, Hartford. Th ...

, issued recommendations for Stamford government to unify under a single jurisdiction led by a strong mayor, and with a

city council A municipal council is the legislative body of a municipality or local government area. Depending on the location and classification of the municipality it may be known as a city council, town council, town board, community council, rural counc ...

(called the Board of Representatives) of forty members, with two elected from twenty districts. These recommendations were approved by Stamford voters and the new system took effect on April 15, 1949. Stamford retains its strong-mayor form of government today. The mayor appoints the departments heads, acts as chief executive officer of the city, and is responsible for presenting the budget to the board of finance, city council, and planning board. The city council approves the budget and passes ordinances and resolutions. Both the mayor and the city council serve four-year terms, and there are no

term limit A term limit is a legal restriction that limits the number of terms an officeholder may serve in a particular elected office. When term limits are found in presidential and semi-presidential systems they act as a method of curbing the potenti ...

List of mayors of Stamford

The following table lists the mayors of Stamford, as well as their dates in office, their dates of birth, and (if deceased) their dates of death.Stamford Mayors
, Ferguson Library.

Notes

{{reflist

External links

Consolidation - Fifty Years in the Making
from the Stamford Board of Representatives Stamford