Handbook of Urban Services

A Basic Guide for Local Governments

Charles K. Coe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317469001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

City and county governments provide a wide array of highly technical urban services. Gaining a rudimentary understanding of them can be a daunting challenge for students as well as new and inexperienced public servants. "Handbook of Urban Services" is designed to help meet this challenge.In language that will make the fundamentals clear to non-specialists, this practical handbook provides concise overviews of 17 core local government services in four functional areas: public Safety and Health Services - Police, fire, emergency management, emergency medical, animal control, and public health; Public Works and Planning Services - Planning and inspections, water treatment and distribution, wastewater and stormwater management, street maintenance and construction, solid waste collection and disposal, and forestry; Leisure Services - Parks and recreation, and libraries; and, Support Services - Public equipment, public buildings, and public facilities. Each chapter begins with a brief history of the service, followed by a discussion of effective management practices and policies. Chapter-ending bibliographies refer the reader to sources with more in-depth treatment.

1

Introduction

The life of a city or county manager is never dull. Successful managers must be diplomats, coaches, mediators, leaders, psychologists, and team players. They interact with the widest spectrum of the community: governing board members, their staff, happy and disgruntled citizens, other governments, developers, and neighborhood groups, to name but a few. Managers make a host of decisions daily. Some are easy “no-brainer” choices; others, though, require the wisdom of Solomon. Like elected officials, managers know too well that they cannot please everyone all of the time. The rewards, however, are great: a paved road in a dusty neighborhood; a new community center; neighborhood groups reducing crime hand in hand with police officers; volunteer firefighters responding to emergencies; potable, high-quality water; disease prevention; a thriving recreation program; sanitary restaurants; and a bonded community.

Managers face the challenge and reward of working with a wide range of professional specializations, each of which has its own jargon, norms, history, and practices. Engineers design public facilities and manage public-works services like road construction and maintenance, water and sewer treatment, and refuse collection. Planners guide development, zoning, and capital construction. Public-safety professionals prevent crime and fires and respond to crime-related, fire-related, and natural-disaster emergencies. Librarians operate libraries. Recreation specialists manage programs and facilities such as pools, community centers, and parks. To lead this diverse professional team, a successful manager must be a jack of all trades.

A brief history explains the evolving role of the urban manager. After the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution caused unprecedented population growth in cities as manufacturing plants located near urban services such as water supplies, sewers, and roads. Cities had to provide high quality service to meet the increased demand. Consequently, department heads formed professional associations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police (1893), the International Association of Fire Chiefs (1837), the National Association of Fire Chiefs (1893), the American Society of Municipal Engineers (1894), the Municipal Finance Officers Association (1906), and the National Recreation Association (1906). Following suit, city managers formed the International City Management Association (ICMA) in 1915.

To reduce corruption in patronage-driven cities, forty-six local government reform groups formed the National Municipal League (NML) in 1895. In 1899, the NML approved the first Model City Charter. A Model Charter recommends the governmental structure, the selection and powers of local officials, and the method of executing basic functions, including taxing and borrowing power. The first Model Charter recommended the strong-mayor form of government.

In 1908, Staunton, Virginia, appointed a city manager, thereby setting the stage for a new form of government: the council-manager form, in which the city manager, a skilled professional, carries out the policies set by the governing board and serves at the pleasure of that board. In 1915, the NML recommended the council-manager plan in its Model City Charter. Some strong-mayor cities likewise professionalized by hiring a chief administrative officer (CAO), usually appointed by the mayor, to assist the mayor in day-to-day operations. The first CAO worked for the mayor of San Francisco in 1931. The Model City Charter has been updated eight times, most recently in 2003.¹

As the complexity of local services increased, city and county managers needed more education. The first universities to offer a master’s degree in public administration (MPA) were Michigan (1913), Stanford (1919), Southern California (1921), Texas A&M (1924), and Syracuse (1924). At first, MPA course work principally concerned urban services like streets, sewer and water systems, and waste collection and disposal. Thereafter, though, courses focused less on urban services and more on generic skills such as budgeting, human-resource management, and policy analysis. In 1934, ICMA took up the task of teaching urban-management subjects through correspondence courses in public-works management, city planning, police administration, fire administration, property assessment, public-welfare administration, municipal finance, and municipal management. ICMA also published “green books” on these topics for use as study guides.

After World War II, when the degree of choice for a budding public manager became the MPA, the number of MPA programs mushroomed. More recently, students with an interest in nonprofit management and inter-sectoral collaboration are seeking an MPA. Currently, a typical MPA program primarily offers courses that teach the generic skills mentioned above, plus program evaluation, information technology, and research methods. Most MPA programs offer only a few courses in urban services; some offer none. A would-be city or county manager must learn about these functions on-the-job. Some graduates are fortunate to work as an assistant to a seasoned mentor-manager. Others, though, find that gaining experience is more problematic, particularly if they are working in a specialized position such as a budget analyst, policy analyst, departmental assistant, or planner.

This guide is an introduction, a basic primer, to sixteen core urban services. It does not cover the services in great depth but refers the reader to materials that go into greater detail. The book has been field-tested by MPA students who have used it to ask department heads questions about their departments’ functions. The students have found it a valuable tool for learning about the nuts and bolts of urban services.

Each chapter follows a standard format. A brief history of the service area internationally and in the United States introduces the topic. The discussion then moves to general issues faced by managers in the core service area. Finally, the guide examines the methods urban professionals follow, drawn from a wide array of recommended practices and procedures, particularly those prescribed by professional associations.

NOTE

  1. For a discussion of this update, and the history of the Model City Charter in general, see Christopher Gates and Robert Loper, “Reviewing the Model City Charter: The Making of the Eighth Edition,” PM Magazine 85, no. 3 (2003).

FOR FURTHER READING

Ammons, David. Municipal Benchmarks, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001.

Stenberg, Carl and Susan Austin. Managing Local Government Services, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: International City/County Management Association, 2007.

Wood, Len, and Joe Baker. Tales from the Trenches. Ranch Palos Verdes, CA: The Training Shoppe, 2003.

Part I

Public Safety and Public Health Services

2

Police

HISTORY

The Volunteer Era (Roman Days to 1844)

Caesar Augustus formed the first police department, responsible for his protection, general police duties, intelligence gathering, and night security patrols. In the United States, volunteers initially performed most of the policing. Slave patrols helped Southern slaveholders recover and punish runaway slaves. An elected sheriff, assisted by volunteers, policed rural areas, as U.S. marshals (for example, Wyatt Earp) did in western towns. In New England, volunteers performed a night watch, often overseen by a paid police officer, called a constable. Boston established a night watch in 1631 with an officer and six men. By 1635, male property owners over age sixteen took turns preventing crimes and disturbances. By 1796, watchmen carried a badge, a rattle to alert citizens of problems, and a six-foot pole to nab lawbreakers. Men were often assigned to watchman duty as a punishment or in lieu of military service. Hence, many of them, less than vigilant, drank and slept on the job.

The Political Era (1844–1919)

After the Civil War, as cities industrialized, they became more crowded, diverse, and crime-ridden. Consequently, they established paid police departments. Using London’s Metropolitan Police Department as a model, in 1844, New York City created a paid department managed by a police chief appointed by the mayor. In 1854, Pennsylvania created a state police department, mainly to crush coal strikes. By the 1870s, every major city had a full-time police department, many of which were controlled by a political machine like Boss Tweed’s in New York. Cities were broken down into wards overseen by a ward boss, who decided who would be hired. Those hired usually had to pay off the ward boss. Moreover, the political machine sometimes used police officers to “discourage” political opposition and collect political bribes.

Walking a beat, police officers became intimately familiar with peoples’ problems on their beat, acting somewhat as social workers—operating soup kitchens, providing lodging and food to the homeless, and visiting houses to check for cholera and other diseases. Police officers then used the watchman policing style. They enforced ordinances regarding health, lighting, public lewdness, and street fights but left solving serious crimes (such as murder, rape, and robbery) to private authorities, like Pinkerton agents. Later, municipal police detectives took on crime-solving but were often paid a fee or a percentage of stolen money recovered.¹

The Professional Era (1920 to thel980s)

Crime incidence increased in the 1920s and 1930s for three reasons. First, the Volstead Act (Prohibition), enacted in 1920, caused more gang-related crimes. Second, robberies increased as cars enabled robbers to flee the scene of a crime. Finally, abject poverty, brought on by the Great Depression, spawned crime sprees during the 1930s, personified by notoriously colorful criminals like John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Ma Barker, and Bonnie and Clyde. To combat crime, police departments professionalized, adopting standard procedures and engaging in more training, planning, research, and crime-solving.² Two founding fathers of police professionalism were August Vollmer and O.W. Wilson. Vollmer, the police chief in Berkeley, California, from 1909 to 1932, pioneered the use of fingerprinting, handwriting analysis, and motorcycle units. Wilson, a protégé of Vollmer, initiated one-officer motorized patrols, two-way radios, and rotating beat assignments to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Public Safety and Public Health Services
• Part II. Public Works and Planning Services
• Part III. Leisure Services
• Part IV. Support Services
• Glossary
• Index
• About the Author