The commission form of city government, also known as the Galveston Plan, was devised in Galveston in 1901 and became one of the three basic forms of municipal government in the United States. (The others are mayor-council and council-manager.) Under the commission plan voters elect a small governing commission, typically five or seven members........The bigger problem, which Galveston would still have faced if it had been properly warned in 1900, is the logistical challenge of evacuating large metropolitan areas in short amounts of time, Emanuel says.