The Common Council and How the Mayor Works With It

Two Branches, One City

Stoughton runs on a mayor–council form of government, and the defining feature of that form is a split between two branches. The mayor is the executive; the Common Council is the legislative branch ¹. This is the same separation found in larger governments, scaled down to a small Wisconsin city. The mayor carries out policy and runs the day-to-day operation; the council makes the rules.

That division is not a technicality. It determines what a mayor can and cannot do alone, and it shapes how anyone in the office gets anything accomplished. The council passes ordinances, adopts the annual budget, and sets policy direction. The mayor executes those decisions, makes appointments, and presides over the council’s meetings. Understanding where one branch’s authority ends and the other’s begins is the foundation for everything that follows.

How the Stoughton Council Is Built

The Stoughton Common Council has 12 alderpersons. They are drawn from 4 districts, with 3 alderpersons representing each district, and they serve staggered 3-year terms ². Each piece of that structure matters.

The 4 districts mean representation is geographic: every part of the city sends voices to the council, and an alderperson is accountable first to the residents of a particular district. With 3 alderpersons per district, no single person speaks for an entire area alone.

The phrase staggered terms is worth unpacking, because it has practical consequences. Rather than electing all 12 alderpersons at once, the city stages elections so that only a portion of the seats turn over in any given year. The terms overlap; they are offset from one another. The effect is continuity: at any moment, most of the council consists of members who were already serving and already understand the issues in front of them. A single election cannot sweep the entire body out and replace it with newcomers. For a mayor, this means the council is a relatively stable institution — relationships and agreements built with sitting alderpersons tend to carry forward, but so do disagreements and long-running disputes.

Sharing Power: What Each Side Controls

The cleanest way to hold the relationship in your head is to sort actions into “decide” and “carry out.”

The council decides the rules. It passes ordinances, which are the city’s local laws. It adopts the budget, which is the single most consequential policy document the city produces each year. And it sets broader policy direction. These are collective acts of the legislative body, not the mayor’s to issue alone.

The mayor carries out and shapes. The mayor executes the policies the council adopts, appoints the members of committees, boards, and commissions, and reviews and revises the budget before and as it moves through the council ². The mayor also presides. In Wisconsin mayor–council cities, the mayor generally presides over the council and, as a standard feature of this form of government, typically votes only to break a tie ¹. The mayor runs the meeting and can settle a deadlock, but is not just another vote in the ordinary course of business.

How a Mayor Actually Gets Things Done

Because the council holds the power to pass ordinances and adopt the budget, a mayor cannot govern by decree. The work of the office is largely the work of building majorities on a 12-member body.

Several levers make that possible. The appointment power is among the strongest: by appointing the members of committees, boards, and commissions, the mayor influences who shapes proposals long before they reach a council vote ². The budget role gives the mayor the first move on spending priorities, since the mayor reviews and revises the budget that the council then considers ². Chairing the Plan Commission puts the mayor at the head of the body central to land use and development ². And as an ex officio member of all council committees, the mayor can participate across the committee structure rather than being shut out of where the detailed work happens ².

None of these levers substitutes for votes. Each one is a way to inform, persuade, and assemble the support an ordinance or a budget needs to pass.

The Practical Lesson for a Candidate

The takeaway for anyone considering the office is direct: the mayor leads, but cannot act alone. Every major outcome — an ordinance, a budget, a new policy — ultimately runs through a vote of the Common Council. A mayor who treats the council as an obstacle will struggle; a mayor who builds working relationships with alderpersons across the 4 districts, and who can reliably assemble a majority, will be effective. The ability to count votes and to work with the people who hold them is not a soft skill at the margin of the job. It is the job.

This material is educational and is not legal advice; confirm specifics with the City Clerk or counsel before acting on them.