Tag Archives: cities

How can this make sense?

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One good thing about working in local government is just when you think that you have seen it all…surprise!  The latest “you have to be kidding moment” comes courtesy of the federal government.  They are proposing to make municipal bonds taxable as one of the ways to plug the holes in their budget.  The same municipal bonds that help local government to build critical infrastructure.

What’s especially interesting about this idea is it doesn’t just mean that investors pay more in taxes.  It has the added effect of raising the cost of every local infrastructure project in the United States of America!  That’s the same US of A that has identified so many deficiencies in local infrastructure that most consider it to ba a crisis, is now considering a way to make projects less viable and more costly.  Municipal bonds are currently funding over $3.7 trillion worth of essential infrastructure across the country. Ninety (90) percent of this amount went to improve schools, hospitals, water and sewer facilities, public power utilities, roads and public transit.

I recognize that the federal government has budget issues that are almost beyond definition, but this “solution” takes money away from local projects and throws it into the federal abyss.  Every dollar the feds will take in taxes, is one less dollar we have to maintain our communities. Is this really a step forward?

Mark me down as a no.

Can negative feedback be positive?

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This Blog Post by Heidi Grant Halvorson  is worth checking out, as it debunks the notion that we should only give positive feedback. There is a classic scene in the movie “Meet the Fockers.”  In the movie, the lead character’s (Greg) father-in-law is stunned to find out that they make 9th place ribbons. He makes this discovery while perusing a shrine to Greg still maintained by Greg’s parents that feature a number of the mementos to mediocrity. I think it rather brilliantly illustrates the idea we should only encourage and never criticize. Criticism though is an important and necessary component of staff development, and understanding when to use each is important.

So what purpose does positive and negative feedback serve?  Positive feedback does help to increase staff commitment by enhancing their experience and boosting their confidence. Negative feedback is more explanatory as it provides feedback on where staff needs to spend place additional effort, as well as offering insight into how they might improve.

With that understanding, you can see that positive and negative feedback each serve a purpose. For an inexperienced staff member, positive feedback may help them to stay optimistic and comfortable given the challenges they are facing.  This added encouragement is something novices tend to need more than the seasoned pro. When you are dealing with an expert, and they essentially are looking for those opportunities for incremental improvement, it’s negative feedback or criticism that will help them achieve at the next level.

Keep this lesson in mind when trying to develop staff.  This isn’t second grade soccer, so we don’t have to hand out 9th place ribbons.  Negative feedback may be exactly what certain members of your team need to be on top of their game.

The Big Disconnect

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Once upon a time in a land far, far, away….Oh wait wrong fairly tale.  What am I talking about? The fact that not too long ago the provision ofr services in Michigan used to be a shared responsibility between state government and local government.  But, over the past decade or more what we have seen is a devolving of those responsibilities to primarily locals as the state has used nearly $5 billion meant for locals to fill its own budget hole.  As a result we’ve seen locals layoff police and fire personnel, close parks and libraries, and put off much need upgrades to important infrastructure such as local streets and sewers. At the same time, getting state government (governors and legislators) to come together on the need for additional revenues has been virtually impossible.  Take additional revenues to help fix our roads and bridges and support transit alternatives.  Even with federal dollars at stake, the legislature can’t seem to find a way to agree to something…anything that would bring such areas into the 21st century.

And yet, at the local level, residents are passing millage after millage to support any number of services.  As a matter of fact at the August election, 90% of all local millages were approved.  This included 100% of all public transit millage requests!   The story has been the same the past couple of years. In the August 2010 election, 86% of all millages were approved and in May of 2011 more than 80% were adopted.

So what’s the deal in the halls of Lansing or Washington?   Clearly, local voters are more than willing to support additional revenues for items when the case is made for specific services that add to our quality of life.  Lets just be sure that the next time we hear a state legislator say the public is against raising taxes to remind them of the reality.

Municipal Budgets and Placemaking: Peanut Butter and Jelly, or Oil and Water?

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As a member of the League’s staff with expertise in municipal finance, I find myself in the rather unique position of speaking to large groups of people about both the importance of place, as well as municipal finance and budgeting. Obviously these two topics have nothing in common, or do they? While it seems to some that these are divergent topics, I would suggest that they should be uncompromisingly intertwined.  Preparing a budget without the proper vision is like making a sandwich without bread.  It will meet the basic requirement, but it isn’t very appealing.

We all know too well that we have been dealing with some of the most challenging financial circumstances in memory.  Too often the budget process becomes an agonizing contest with the singular focus of balancing revenues and expenditures without remaining grounded to a fundamental placemaking strategy.  Some of the first targets of the local budget process can frequently be community assets that help define our community. Somehow these facilities and programs lose out to other more “critical” operations.  We must remember however, that a community’s unique sense of place is its greatest asset. Therefore it must be the foundation of any budget, and the balancing decisions should reflect that fact.  To put it another way, why do people choose to live in your community?  Why did you choose to live there?  If the budgets you adopt don’t reflect the answer to that question, then aren’t you destroying the “sense of place” that brought you and other residents to your community? Isn’t this further diminishing your community’s value?

Clearly you all have difficult decisions to make, but in doing so you should resist the temptation to uncouple place from budget.  To do so is not in your community’s best interests, and that strategy will actually work to exacerbate an already challenging situation. Place isn’t just a buzz word that we talk about to make ourselves feel better; it is at the core of who we are and why we exist.  Money spent supporting our own unique places are dollars well spent.

Budget accordingly.

Is Failure an Option?

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I was reading a great Blog Post by Jeffrey Baumgartner, on the cost of not implementing new innovations.  While the motivations are different for business, the idea is as true for local government as it is for business.  The cost of the status quo can be profound, and no one keeps track of the innovations we chose not to implement.  We all need to assess our ability to innovate, and much of that “ability” hinges on communication, empowerment, and a willingness to fail.

That’s right willingness to fail.  The biggest impediment to innovation is the fear of failure.  Unlike a business, we all live in a world where a bad day can be on the front page.  Local leadership has to ensure that our staffs believe that they will be supported for trying new things, and that we recognize that not all ideas are good ideas.

Thomas Edison was quoted as saying, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  We need to create that type of environment if we want to spur innovation.   Sticky notes were created by trying to invent a new type of super glue, so you never fully know where the next great idea may come from.

What does your internal communication look like?  Does your staff feel that they have the real ability to influence change and bring forth ideas?  Do you have a good system, formal or informal, to get ideas from the trenches to the people with the ability to make it happen?  These are all key questions that you need to ask yourself.  Too often when looking to identify new opportunities we fail to look in the most obvious places.  The people that we rely on to perform the day to day functions will quite often have the greatest insight on where the opportunities lie.  We need to tap that resource and maximize the benefits.  Our ability to do more with less has never been more important.  We need to be certain that we have done our part to identify and implement that next great idea.