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Show Ideal City Government Mayor-Council Plan; The mayor-council plan, now under consideration by the Utah Legislative Council, is them most popular form of government for cities in the United States, according to a study just released by Utah Foundation. The nonprofit governmental research organization observes that nearly half of all U. S. cities with more than 5,000 population operate under the mayor-council plan. This plan is most popular in the very large cities (94 of cities with over 500 000) and in the small cities (59 of cities with 5,000 to 10,000 population). Included are both "strong mayor" cities where most of the administrative administra-tive are vested in the mayor and ''weak mayor" cities where the city council (often through boards or committees) assumes a more direct control over administrative adm-inistrative affairs. The analysis of municipal government types indicates that the fastest growing form of government in the U. S. is the council-manager plan. At the present time 35 of the cities operate under this form of government. In Utah, two second class cities (Ogden and Provo) and eleven third class cities have the council-manager plan in operation. Declining in importance is the commission form of government govern-ment with only 13 of all U. S. cities over 5,000 population pop-ulation still retaining this plan. ' The Foundation report notes that at one time the . commission plan was used in more than a third of the large and medium sized cities of the United States. Currently, there are three Utah cities (Salt Lake City, Logan, and Murray) operating under the commission commiss-ion form. |