The comptroller's desk — and the woman who became mayor from it

1894–2026 · THE CITY'S BOOKKEEPERS

The office: The city's chief fiscal office appears in the directories in 1894–95 under the title Comptroller — W. H. Simmons as printed that year, James H. Simonson in 1895–96 — and the directory line runs Gustav Berghoff (1897–1900), George Fox (1901–05), August M. Schmidt (1906–09), W. Sherman Cutshall and John Kucher and Cutshall again (1910–13), Philip Baade (1914–17), Henry J. Doell (1918–21) and Julian F. Frank (1922–23). A separate City Auditor's office ran beside it until 1909. Between 1924 and 1946 the title changed from Comptroller to Controller — the state roster of 25 March 1946 already heads the column "Controller," with Otto H. Adams in the office — but the exact year of the change, and the holders of 1924–45 and 1947–81 apart from the 1946 and 1982 points (Frank W. Heyman, named as City Controller in a compliance review filed with the council in March 1982), remain open on the same library-bound evidence as the clerk's gap, and are named as such.

Cosette Simon: The desk's most consequential holder reached it in the 1980s. Cosette Simon was city controller in 1985 when Mayor Winfield Moses resigned on 8 July after pleading guilty to campaign-finance misdemeanors; by the succession machinery the controller acted as mayor, and Simon served eleven days, 8–19 July 1985 — Fort Wayne's first woman mayor — before the Democratic caucus returned Moses himself to the office. Her eleven days are the only mayoralty in the city's history that began at the comptroller's desk, and they belong to this record as much as to the mayors': the bookkeeper, for a fortnight, was the government. The modern run is documented whole: Pat Roller (2004–2015, and again from May 2025), Len Poehler (2016–2018) and Garry Morr (2018–2025) — Roller's return in 2025, succeeding the man who had succeeded her successor, closing the office's recent history in the same circulating pattern as the nineteenth century's.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co. directories, 1894–1923, and Indiana Roster of State and Local Officials, 25 March 1946 — the comptroller/controller points and the bounded title change; Government gaps notes, waves 2–3.
2. Government section of this history — Simon's acting mayoralty, 8–19 July 1985; City of Fort Wayne releases and Indiana State Board of Accounts reports — the Roller, Poehler and Morr runs.