Reflection On City Council Meeting

On Monday, April 13th, 2009, I visited the Culver City city council meeting, and found that they operate using a council-manager form of government. For a city with a population of about 38,000, this type of governmental structure is fairly common, and I was not surprised to see it in action in a community where the median household income is around $56,000 a year. Culver City is also a culturally rich community with a 60 percent Caucasian population, and a quarter of the residents are either of African American or Asian decent. The mayor, D. Scott Malsin, is one of five members on the council, and his term as mayor is on a rotating basis. Having been to a Hermosa Beach city council meeting with a similar council-manager structure, I knew

The City of Bend, Oregon Government consists of approximately 500 employees across thirteen different divisions. These divisions are Police, Fire, Community Development, Public Works, etc and are all coordinated under the City Manager’s office. Bend’s government style is called a “weak mayor” form of city government, in that the citizens elect a city council, which then elects a mayor from among the council members. The city council and mayor, then hire a City Manager to run the day to day operations of the city. In doing this form of government, the City Manager is not directly accountable to the citizens and can focus on the needs of the city and its employees. At the same time, the City Council can only provide direction to the city manager and is accountable to the citizens. The city employees in this case are led by the city manager as directed by city council. The community leadership environment in this case is established by council to provide direction to the city manager.

At the Dallas Center city council meeting topics discussed were the TreesPlease fiscal year, the city library financial summary, equipment upgrades from Minburn Communications on the water tower, southwest stormwater drainage improvements,trailhead restrooms project, water plant update, wastewater treatment plant project, ordinance actions, DNR mandates, firework restrictions, city reports, and public forums. I felt that the most important issue discussed was the fireworks restriction. Most topics discussed were just a summary of what stage of a process a project was on, however; the fireworks discussion was debated for awhile. They debated about what terminology to use for supervision of fireworks, they

The management of an organization plays an integral part in determining the direction and performance of the organization. The manner in which the management of an organization is handled has a profound effect on the organization. The success of an organization is dependent upon a flexible and skilled management and workforce. The management of an organization is responsible for shaping up the organizational behavior and ultimately the culture within the organization. Public management faces a multiple of challenges and opportunities, how the management deals with these issues translates to efficiency in management. The personal judgments and skills of public managers can make a significant impact in public management. If

The increased of industrialization in American cities brought a new social demand to public officials who were unprepared to target the existing issues of society. Administrative officers started to gaining power to conduct intervention programs or institutions. However, people started to distrust public administrators and institutions for their inefficiency and incapacity they gave to the treatment of social issues. The author

On September 9, 2014 I attended the Glendale City Council meeting which was held at the Council Chamber which is located on the 2nd floor of the Glendale City Hall, Room 200, 613 East Broadway, Glendale, California. The meeting commenced at 6 p.m. and lasted for approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes. Several policy proposals were made and discussed in this particular meeting. This paper is aimed at discussing the various policy proposals made and debated at this meeting with a view to establishing whether they are acceptable or unacceptable to the Glendale electorate. It is, however, essential to provide a brief background of the City of Glendale before embarking on a discussion of policy proposals.

The society is moving towards a large-scale economy and there is an exceptional increase of free trade and exchange all around the world. This fact has brought vast opportunities to build up newer policies, wide-range political programs and methodologies in the field of public administration. I would like to contribute to this challenging environment after completing the necessary education. My intention is to supply well-rounded ideas which would possibly contribute to public administration in my home country. I am determined to provide meaningful and finest solutions to diverse problems of public administration. Consequently, my goal is to successfully complete master of public administration and serve society as a high quality public official.

The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively compare and contrast the implementation of two types of mayor-council government systems which are that of the weak-mayor type of the mayor council system and the strong-mayor type of the mayor council system. The premise of the analysis which has been conducted in this paper is based upon assessing the local governments of two cities within the United States – Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Minneapolis, Minnesota which follow the adoption of a strong-mayor system and weak-mayor system respectively.

The Dahlonega City Hall was crowded on the evening of March 1st 2010. The seats were full, except for at the very front, and the standing room was filled almost out the door. The crowd, mostly made up of students, leaned in to hear as the voices of the City Council members faded in and out of the faltering sound system. The six City Council members and the mayor sat along a bench as if they were the judges at a hearing. Because of the ongoing discussions and the crowd, I thought I had arrived a few minutes late; but I was able to find a seat in the front two rows. Despite how packed the small room was there were plenty of empty seats in the front. I had thought the meeting was well on its way by the way conversation was going and

There are numerous techniques the mayor can use to create effective teamwork among city employees one of which is an atmosphere of accountability and trust as a common goal. The American Management Association (2014) stated, “When people work together in a climate of trust and responsibility toward a common goal, they put aside turf issues and politics and focus on the tasks to be done. This

For my project I visited the City of Hesperia’s Official Website and reviewed the April 1, 2014 City Council Meeting which is available to the public on line. The beginning of the meeting started with a call of order then proceeded to the roll call of the board members. After these steps had taken place an invocation was performed followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. I have never heard of a prayer referred to as an invocation and it prompted me to review the words definition, “a public request for guidance, good will, good wishes, and good things. (Wikipedia). I was very pleased to see that the council members have chosen prayer as guidance followed by the pledge of allegiance, a leadership respectful of God and

I chose to attend a city council meeting for this assignment and was very surprised at what I witnessed. The city council served an important purpose and the meeting actually accomplished many important goals. Among the interesting things that I saw at the council meeting were the people who attended, the people who presented, the people who sat on the council, and the subjects that were being voted upon in the meeting.

There are currently only a handful of reserved spaces on campus, and the ground has yet to be broken for the construction of the parking deck. In fact, Winthrop University does not even have all the funds needed to build this parking deck. When I approached Jack Allen, of Campus Police, with my idea of reserved parking spaces, he told me that he thought it was a good idea. Walter Hardin, when given the same idea, seemed to think that the reserved parking system would not realistically work out but was open to the proposal.

Admittedly, it is important to have an effective government for the growth and development of a nation. Equally, it is important to maintain a democratic government. While there are different ways of understanding what constitutes a democratic government, in public administration, democratic government can be viewed as a government that is responsive to the perspectives of its citizens and exhibit responsibility to the citizens. This can be promoted by the public institutions and public administrators (King, Feltey, & Susel, 1998). They can use various processes to ensure a democratic government including collaborative governance, decision making, citizen participation, administrative reforms, and budgeting. This paper seeks to discuss and analyze the efforts that the public organizations and the public administrators can make with regards to collaborative governance, citizen participation, and decision making to maintain a democratic government.