Lower Valley Matters

By: Mike Fong and Laura Solis, Lower Valley Matters

October 24, 2026

On Friday, the Sunnyside City Council voted unanimously to enter into contract negotiations to make Mouhamad Zaher its next city manager. Not all cities in the Lower Valley have city managers, so what’s the difference? In this article, we’ll compare the city manager form of government (Toppenish and Sunnyside) with the strong mayor form of government (Mabton, Wapato, Zillah, and Granger).

Background. In Washington State, 54 cities have a city manager while 227 have a strong mayor form of government. City managers and strong mayors generally have the same core responsibility: to administer the day-to-day operations of the city. This means that city departments (police, public works, parks, etc.) typically report to them. 

City managers answer to their city councils, which have the authority to hire and fire them (see Sunnyside). In a strong mayor system, however, the mayor is elected and therefore ultimately accountable to the voters.

So in a city manager system, what role do mayors, like Vicky Frausto in Sunnyside and Elpidia Saavedra in Toppenish, have? These mayors are members of the city council, and their mayoral role is largely ceremonial. Mayors Frausto and Saavedra preside over council meetings, but they have one vote and the same powers as all the other members on their city councils. Their mayoral role includes public-facing responsibilities such as ribbon cuttings, parades, and representing the city at functions and gatherings as well as meetings with other government officials. 

Compensation. Sunnyside has advertised their city manager position with an annual salary range of $155,000-$185,000. Toppenish recently hired Adam Vaughn as city manager with a starting salary of $165,000. Councilmembers in Sunnyside and Toppenish earn $4,800 a year and in the other four cities earn between $50-$150 a month. 

By contrast, strong mayors in the area are compensated for part-time roles. Granger Mayor Hilda González, Zillah Mayor Scott Carmack, Mabton Mayor Martha González and Wapato Mayor Margaret Estrada each receive a flat monthly stipend of $1,000. They are working with smaller budgets, populations, and staff than Sunnyside and Toppenish.

Experience. One big difference between the two forms of government is that city managers are typically professional government administrators with experience in senior leadership roles running cities and agencies or have deep backgrounds in policy, budgeting, and operations. For example, Zaher led the public works department and served as deputy city administrator for St. Helens, Oregon and before that headed the project management office for Clark County Public Transportation Authority. Toppenish City Manager Adam Vaughn was the assistant city manager before being promoted to his current role. Before that, he was the budget and finance director for the City of Topeka, Kansas. 

Elected mayors can have vastly different professional backgrounds. Granger Mayor González worked for years as an administrator of various equity programs at Yakima Valley College. Zillah Mayor Carmack is a chiropractor. Mabton Mayor González is an accountants payable specialist at Mountain States Construction Company. Wapato Mayor Estrada is a special education teacher. 

Recognizing that serving as the chief executive for day-to-day operations of any city requires full-time professional attention, some strong mayor cities across the state have a full-time chief administrator or similar job that helps mayors oversee operations. Of the four smaller cities in the Lower Valley, Zillah is the only one that has hired a full-time administrator.   

Which System is Better? There is no objective answer to this question, and it likely depends on what a city values more in local government. Some argue that city managers can bring more professional experience and training to the work, de-politicize day-to-day decisions, and carry out better long-term planning since they don’t have to stand for re-election every four years. On the con side, city managers may have less autonomy to move decisively since they have to report to the entire city council, which requires more consensus-building. The most common criticism is that they lack a direct mandate from, or accountability to, the public as professional bureaucrats.

For strong mayors, the opposite arguments are often made: they may have a wide range of expertise but no management or relevant experience, and they have more political—and potentially polarizing—roles. Direct accountability to the public can make for quicker decision-making and a higher public profile can lend to better transparency for residents, business owners, and the media.

But these characteristics are not universal truths, and there are likely to be compelling exceptions to these broad generalizations. The bottom line is that both systems yield good and bad outcomes that are likely driven more by other factors than the structure of government itself. And, as always, it comes down to the people of a community – both in the government and most importantly you as a voter.