City manager search reveals a weakness in city charter

The search for a new city manager is about to wrap up.
The private company that was hired to conduct the search will reveal its findings at the Feb. 12 city council meeting. Word is that over 20 candidates applied but only a handful met the city charter qualifications.
The qualifications for Hamtramck’s city manager need to be looked at again, with an eye toward revising it. Simply put, it requires a city manager candidate to have had experience in that position in a city with a population of at least 10,000.
That’s about 5,000 too many in our way of looking at things.
We understand that the framers of the charter purposely raised the bar on qualifications to prevent local elected officials of playing games and hiring one of their buddies who had little experience.
We are past that moment. It’s too bad no one thought to put an expiration date on that requirement and allow for it to come down to a more reasonable qualification.
Hamtramck is too small of a town to expect that level of experience, and we are limiting ourselves to otherwise qualified candidates.
We urge the city council to form a sub-committee to explore updating our city charter and presenting updates for the voters to consider. The charter is out of date and needs to be refreshed.