The Model City Charter has exerted enormous influence over the structuring of municipal governance for more than a century. Published in 2003, the eighth edition recommends the ―council-manager structure of municipal government first proposed in the 1915 model. It has become the most widely used governmental structure in American cities with a population over 10,000. The model has been refined over the years, but the fundamental principle, that all powers of the city be vested in a popularly elected council, which appoints a professional manager who is continuously responsible to and removable by the council, remains the same.

(A Publication of the National Civic League, Eighth Edition Second Printing 2011)