The Problems Of Municipal Administration By Jane Addams

responsibility to solve problems often exceed the capacity of state and local authorities to respond effectively. On the other hand, policies developed at the national level may not sufficiently reflect the great diversity of interests across the U.S. to be effective at the local level. Moreover, the

Addams, Jane. The modern city and the municipal franchise for women. Baltimore, Maryland: National American Women Suffrage Association, 1906. (Jane Addams Article from Moodle Site)

My Introductory to Public Administration class has taught me the range that can come with public administration. Public administrators are employed in all levels of government, across various fields including social welfare, financial administration, and human resources (Denhardt, 2014, p. 1). Despite the various type of public administration jobs that exist, the one thing all public administrators are required to do is to maintain a commitment to public service (Denhardt, 2014, p. 1). In order to better understand how public administrators are responsive to public interests, I was assigned the task of interviewing a professional in public administration. I chose to interview Jeanell Emond, program manager for Central Valley Prevention Program (CVPP) and Mental Health Systems (MHS), because of my future in social work and my interest in developing and managing programs that benefit the community. Through the interview I was able to gain valuable insight on the agency and Mrs. Emond’s role as a public administrator. More importantly, I was able to learn how interorganizational partnerships, financial management, ethics, and leadership and management skills in public administration can help develop stronger communities.

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.

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 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.

One way to see public administration in action is by attending a city council meeting, whether it be in an urban or rural area, public administration still has a part in each event. As Kettl (2018; p. 244) referenced in his book, there is not a civil system that would be sustainable without strong leadership. This paper will discuss the author’s description, observation, and reflection during a city council meeting.

57). Before the Great Depression of the thirties, the popular opinion was that the federal government should not be heavily involved in providing social welfare. However, the urbanization and industrialization of the early twentieth century, as well as the economic pressure of the 1930s, proved to be more than what state and local governments or private organizations could provide for. These pressures gave way for President Franklin D. Roosevelt to lead America into the New Deal. This included the creation of the U.S. Social Security Program, unemployment assistance, and needs-tested assistance (Salamon 1999, p.58). Roosevelt’s New Deal still left limited coverage, limited funding, and left much of the delivery of social service to state and local governments. Even with all the changes that have occurred in federal programs and policy over the years, Salamon shows that combined state and local governments continued to nearly match the amount of federal spending from 1950 through 1994 (p.59). This again reflects the tension and nature of the American system, which was intended to lean on the strength of the public to innovate and provide for itself. The debate over the amount of government involvement in providing assistance for Americans is still a very important issue as it relates to the role of nonprofit organizations in American society.

Kernaghan, K. 2000. The Post-Bureaucratic Organization and Public Services Values. Interational Review of Administrative Sciences 66. 2000, pp. 92-93.

People always wonder why the City of Angels is different from other cities. This paper will answer this question and explain the uniqueness that makes L.A., “L.A.” Los Angeles, since its birth as an embryonic city, has become one of the most diverse metropolises, offering to the public what no other city can. This paper will emphasize the relationship between the federal government and the western United States. It will also illustrate how capitalism has flourished because of the prevalent 19th century Laissez Faire ideology. It will describe how the free market prevailed and expanded Los Angeles outward, while cultivating new public institutions and private enterprises.

Public Policy is the way that our Executive branch of government help maintain the order of the country as well as the needs of its citizens. Of course, no one system can be individually perfect and solve all issues. But the public policies in the United States have been molded on off racial prejudices in the past, and off legacy racism in the present. Discrimination that affects the racial dynamic of most urban cities in the nation. In this course we have discussed the necessity for public policy and the ways in which it affects this nation. Public Policy -our government and the citizens that have an impact through voting- help shape the economic and social system for the United States. To go more into depth, that means that education, employment, housing, health(care), our communities, and the criminal justice system are all impacted by the decisions made by our government.

In Jane Jacobs’s acclaimed The Life and Death of Great American Cities, she intricately articulates urban blight and the ills of metropolitan society by addressing several binaries throughout the course of the text. One of the more culturally significant binaries that Jacobs relies on in her narrative is the effectively paradoxical relationship between diversity and homogeneity in urban environments at the time. In particular, beginning in Chapter 12 throughout Chapter 13, Jacobs is concerned greatly with debunking widely held misconceptions about urban diversity.

What is an urban revolution? Why is it important for cities to have one? What are that factors that cause these revolutions? In the articles The Urban Revolution by V.Gordon Childe, The Right to The City by David Harvey and lastly, What Type of Public Transit for What Type of Public? by Kafui A. Attoh, displays the different ways the residents in a city react to the social inequality and human rights.

In this book Lynch defines that performance of the city can be measured by reference to its spatial form. But the quality of a place is depends upon combined effect of place and the society which occupies that place. Here Lynch sets up new dimensions for performance in his own criteria. Author also expresses his approach on size of the city, conservation and growth, planning practices and utopian models. The dimensions which are demonstrated in this book may not be fully perfect but of course they combine all social values as well as physical values. Lynch believed that these described dimensions must cover all features of all forms of the settlements and all these dimensions should be usable where values are different.