Mayor vs. Town Manager

While studying communities, students paid specific attention to the difference between the meanings of rural, urban, and suburban. In order to learn more about these words we are studying the three Maine communities of Lewiston, Gorham, and Mexico.

In our research, students had the opportunity to interview the mayor of Lewiston, Robert E. MacDonald, and the retired town manager of Mexico, Joseph Derouche. Mr. MacDonald came to our classroom and answered a list of questions that the students had created in preparation for his visit. Some important things they learned about him were that he cannot fire anyone because he has an elected positon and that about 100 people help him do his job. A few weeks later students interviewed Mr. Derouche by using Skype. We had to interview him using Skype because Mr. Derouche has MS and is in a wheel chair. It is difficult for him to leave the house because sometimes he gets tired and it is better for him to stay at home. (Some of you may remember us interviewing Mr. Derouche for our biography unit at the beginning of the year.) Some important things we learned about Mr. Derouche being a town manager was that he had 29 employees helping him and he was allowed to fire people because he was appointed as town manager instead of being voted in by the community.

After interviewing both men, the class made a venn diagram comparing and contrasting what we had learned about the jobs of running an urban and rural community in Maine. We talked about why we think there are differences between the two and what we thought it might have been like if we could have interviewed the head of Gorham. Would they be a mayor or a town manager? We weren't sure.