The Puyallup city council is made up of seven members: the mayor, the deputy mayor, four council members from the city’s three districts and finally at large member who represents all three districts. Members of city council have different jobs and responsibilities very similar to the four different types of managers explained in Chapter one: top managers, middle managers, first-line managers, and team managers (Williams, 2016) except there is no first-line management. Mayor Hopkins is the top manager and he is responsible for the direction of the city council. Deputy Mayor Palmer is like a middle manager and he is responsible for setting objectives to accomplish the goals and plans of the mayor. The remaining five council members are like team managers and their primary responsibility is to facilitate city council activities to accomplish city goals. Using the four type of management to look at the city council gave me an idea of each person’s job and responsibility.
On February 9th, 2016 I attended a city council meeting for the city of Puyallup at the City Council Chambers at 7:30pm. City clerk, Mary Winters, began the meeting by calling roll. After roll call Mayor Hopkins took over from Mrs. Winters and the first order of business was to vote to approve the current meeting’s agenda and to
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A city manager is not an elected official, but rather someone appointed by the city council to manage a city. (Roberts, 2014) The city manager has a monitor role, scanning the environment for information and because of personal contacts in the community, gets lots of unsolicited information. (Williams, 2016) During his presentation he proposed to rewrite the city council rules as they are outdated with years of old information which was tabled till next meeting. Though he can bring important information to the council to consider, the city manager ultimately had no authority or voting privileges. (Roberts,
After reading the case study Welcome to the new town manager, by Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt, I established three major problems the community of Opportunity needed to correct. These problems involved the water & sewer system, the balancing budget, & the pay-as-you-go method. The city manager, Jennifer Holbrook, must implement strategies that would correct these problems quickly.
The fourth chapter of City Politics by Dennis R. Judd & Todd Swanstrom covers the rise of "Reform Politics" with many local governments during the first half of the 1900s as a way to combat the entrenched political machines that took control of many large city governments in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Over the course of the chapter, Judd & Swanstrom quickly cover the history of the "reform movement" with different examples of how the reform movement affected city politics in different areas.
The Phoenix City Council meeting stood packed with attendees ranging from council men and women, lawyers, (basically elderly) interested citizens, neighborhood representatives, owners of businesses, and many others firm on playing a undeviating role in the due process of local government. The meeting began with an invocation from the pastor of a local church invited to pray by the Mayor Stanton. Then following was a pledge to the flag and then the mayor carries the motion. The Mayor reads for the council while passing them several agendas. This series of formalities set the tone for the arrangement and flow of the summit as a whole. Things steered quickly and professionally thanks to the succinct language of both the City Clerk and the Mayor, who led the agenda of the assembly. In general, each agenda entry was introduced by the Clerk, and then led through the agenda by Mayor, who asked for each item’s approval by the Council. The executive order of the agenda acted mostly as a general guideline, as the meeting swerved from the stated order with relative occurrence. Instead of a stringent order, the items seemed to be litigated first, in terms of how straightforwardly they might be permitted. Entire swathes of application were approved if the Council did not obtain any requests for dialogue concerning the item, and if the Council was expected to endorse the item unanimously. In theory, most of these items had already been hashed out in the various other committees through which any agenda item must pass before reaching the City Council.
The new city manager must have the ability to anticipate, think critically, interpret, decide and learn. An example of a strategic thinker would be if a major hurricane were to make land fall in the city. He or she would need to anticipate some of the possible concerns of the citizens might have during a major hurricane making land fall in the city. He or she must be able to think critically about how to get information out to citizens as quickly as possible, how to prevent major damage and ways to prevent possible deaths. He or she would need to interpret what is the possible affects of the amount of what that is forecasted during the hurricane. He or she would need to decide what actions must take place to keep the citizens of the city safe, out of harms way and most of informed. Most of all he or she would need to learn from others, such as other employees, local and federal governments as well as the
Washington D.C: Our Nation’s Capital Although the entire world is familiar with the City of Washington as the United State’s capital, the city was nonexistent when we became a nation in 1789. Thanks to the brilliant design of the French born engineer, Pierre Charles L’Enfant and his assistants Benjamin Banneker and Andrew Ellicot, our capital city that was once a swamp now is beautiful with many different parks, gardens trees, tall buildings and wide avenues. Washington, District of Columbia named after Christopher Columbus, has played a unique role in the wars of our nation and has been dramatically affected by their awesome events.
The city’s budget crisis was not a surprise, the City Manager had forecasted the shortfall and brought it to the attention of the city council. Based on the organizational structure, the City Manager clearly had more knowledge and information about the city’s budget, which was his source of power. However, the city council actually controls the resources (money in this case) and how and where to distribute the resource. Both, the City Manager and city council possess authority and power that neither want to relinquish; as a result, the employees suffered. Smithville city leaders needed to come together at the onset of the budget crisis and work together in a direct democratic fashion. When leaders come together and synthesize facts and resources, organizational members can increase the power they exert within an organization (Morgan, 2006). The budget crisis could potentially have been avoided had city leaders made an appeal to the public, explained the situation and offered a reasonable solution to the problem. Moreover, the transparency would have relieved some tension between the City Manager, city council, and the three labor unions. Because the city was not transparent and forthcoming with union leaders, the city negotiators enter the negotiation process giving members false hope of receiving salary and benefit increases when there were none to give. In summary, given the current situation, the City Manager needed to exert his expert power on the budget issue, join alliance with the union leaders, and push the city council to change city charter to implement the sales tax, which would have potentially off-set the budget
...ouncil. The quandary that planners seemed to face here was to work with the system of politics. The minutes of the meetings suggests that planners did not do enough to push for the initial proposals that are more evenly distributed. It is also interesting to notice the effect of council members and their vested interests in the regions they were represented. They are not characterized as professionals but when it comes to ethical issues and working towards common good there is no other body that has vested interests in community’s common good. When a political body itself takes decisions that are contrary to planners’ proposals it becomes bigger issue than ethics. But it is to be noted that the planners have to make the decisions objectively taking into consideration all the possible outcomes, in this case the effect on schools and education which they did fail.
The city council cares about citizens and their view of the government to maintain society. However, while it has certainly played a major role it was not necessarily the goal of the initial protestors. Politicians could recognize, not only civil/political rights being violated, but the socio-economic/cultural rights being violated. The construction of Dakota Pipeline intruded on their right to water and sacred ground. There was anger over the bank’s role as one of the lenders helping finance pipeline. Additionally, there was anger regarding Trump’s way of greenlighting. While citizens weren’t directly affected with these injustices it was clear that change needed to
Now that we have established what a council manager form of government we can discuss the roles of the mayor and the city manager. The mayor, is the presiding officer of the council and most often has a vote on all issues. Essentially, the mayor in this form is the “head of state,” the symbolic leader and embodiment of his or her city, but is not the head of
A municipality is a city government that regulates that city and the residents within. The two types of city government charters are the home rule charter and the general law rule charter. Only cities that are over 5,000 in population are allowed have their own charter (“Local government in Texas”). This is called a home rule charter. This lets larger cities have more control over their residents, allowing the government to be efficient and productive.
Michael Henchard's Life in The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy Whilst studying 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' it is noticeable from a fairly early stage that the title statement is ambivalent. We can clearly see that he suffered a great number of disasters, but he also achieved success to a higher level than most.
Employers in the public sector are obliged to meet the requirements of equal opportunity laws and regulations that prohibit discrimination and harassment of employees, and encourage diversity within the workplace. Leaders within the field of public administration have approached the subject of diversity not only as a legal obligation, but as an appreciation of individual differences among employees. In order to explore the role that diversity plays in the field of public administration, this paper will firstly explain and evaluate the concept of diversity. Secondly, individual, cultural, and stakeholder diversity will be explored to determine their impact on what occurs in public agencies. Thirdly, the role of diversity in the administrative process will be discussed. Lastly, the role of diversity will also be examined in relation to Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) in order to identify ways that FDOT’s leaders can apply principles of leadership to improve governance within the organization.
The Confidential Assistant supports the Executive Assistant in efficiently managing demands on the Mayor’s time by receiving and prioritizing all requests for meetings. The incumbent must display political sensitivity in dealing with these requests and in safeguarding the Mayor’s time, schedule and priorities.
A city has to be beautiful, though the definition of “beauty” is so vague. The beauty can be physical, such as enjoyable parks, streetscapes, architectural facades, the sky fragment through freeways and trees; or it can be the beauty of livelihood, people, and history. As landscape architects, we are creating beautiful things or turning the unpleasant memorial.
It has taken 20 to 30 years, based on images taken in space of the Earth during the late 1960s, for people to realize that the environment ‘is like a bathtub of limited capacity’. Cities have been developing based on human culture whilst trying to be sustainable at the same time. Although it may be sustainable, the production process and the energy producing systems where they burn fossil fuels, contributes to the amount of carbon emissions that we produce each day. Green city is an expression for eco-city which is a city built off the principles of living within the means of the environment. It has been perceived as a concept rather than it circumstantially solving an ecological collapse like the ‘green Disneyland’ in Masdar City described