On Thursday night the Auburn City Council was supposed to hold a vote to hire former Auburn Fire Department Training Officer and current Batavia Deputy Fire Chief, Charles Michael Hammon, as Auburn's new fire chief.

But the vote did not occur because of roadblocks raised on Wednesday by an obstructionist Auburn Civil Service Commission. Whether those roadblocks stop the appointment of Hammon, who was well regarded by many when he was in Auburn, there is a more basic issue at hand - why is there even going to be a vote on his appointment?

The city council only gets to appoint three positions, under our current form of government - the city manager, city clerk and deputy clerk - no other full-time employees - not even the city attorney is appointed by the mayor and the council. While, on occasion, smart city managers have allowed them a role in the appointment of legal counsel, it has been more to make sure that they are comfortable with the person that will often give them legal advice week to week. All other full-time appointments are the responsibility of the city manager, in this case, Interim City Manager Michael Long.

One of the reasons that the mayor and city council do not make department head appointments is to keep the process above politics. Department head positions should not go to the person who has the most council votes. Under Auburn's City Charter of government, the appointing authority rests with the city manager, not the city council, unless there is some out of the ordinary contract at issue.

Which raises the above question again: why was this vote even slated? Is it to make sure that the new chief is subservient to the mayor and council, rather than a city manager? The city manager should be the only one making this hire.

What should be most worrisome to the public, is that week in and week out, it is looking more and more like a de facto strong mayor/council form of government now exists at city hall, without the consent of the public through a referendum.

Even as a supporter of a strong mayor form of government, one must be cognizant of the fact that the public has not changed the current form of government, thus the mayor and the council are overstepping their bounds, by a major leap.

If the mayor and city councilors want to have an approval role in such hirings, they need to go to the public and ask for them to give them that power. Until then, they need to follow the city charter.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be e-mailed at cozguytho@aol.com