Dr. Patricia Bixel

They work with members of the Central Relief Committee and look at what the government is going to be afterwards.

And they decide that perhaps in order to be effective, in order to have the confidence of investors, in order to get the money they need to do this rebuilding, they're going to change the form of government for the city.

They're going to become one of the first cities in the country to have a commission form of government.

And this is not a mayor and alderman or a mayor and council type format.

This is a group of people that are chosen, and this becomes a bone of contention going forward, but they're picked to handle a particular division of the operation, the city's operation.

So somebody will do finances, somebody will do power, somebody will do water, somebody will take care of building permits and things like that.

But it's divided based on function.

And initially, the request is that the state appoint the commissioners to this new commission form of government.

Well, what you might notice here is there's a lack of democracy, that nobody's electing this commission that's being appointed.

And so that becomes an issue, and eventually it is decided that the governor will appoint a certain number of the commissioners, and some of them will be elected at large.

But this is the form of government that the city decides will need to be in place.

One of the interesting things about this, other than it's a completely different form of government, is some of the people that agree to get involved.

It's members of the Deepwater Committee.

Some of the wealthier people on the island agree to become part of this commission.

They get the city's financial house in order, and they create an infrastructure for recovery that people trust.

It's interesting to think about whether this would have occurred if it weren't during the progressive period.

This is the progressive period in American history where

There is efforts at reform, new efforts at new kinds of structures of government, and Galveston becomes one of the first cities in the country to have a commission form of government.

Eventually, there are going to be hundreds of small and larger city governments that are based on this model.

People come to Galveston to look at their commission form of government to see if it works.