City Council Case Study

Improved Essays
A city council member oversees and regulates the everyday functions of the management and government actions. The decisions made by the council members are based solely on the community needs. There are three department of a local city council: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. The Executive is the law enforcement of everyday administration. The legislative are the lawmakers. Lastly, the judiciary is the courts of appeals for citizen. The typical city council members represent, legislates, oversees city departments and administrators, and judges the fairness of government operations. Citizens expect their elected officials to be responsive to voter’s demands (Dye & MacManus, 2012, p. 383).
Roles of city councils members’ and the policy
…show more content…
Constituents cannot hold members accountable if they do not know who they are. Although many council members are elected there are many factors as to why council members may be unknown to the local citizens. First, the members may be appointed to office by mayors to fill positions. Secondly, in municipal elections only a few votes can elect a person to office. For example, if a candidate is part of the country club, the club voting members may meet the required number of votes that elects him. Another example would be a pastor running for council and his congregation voting for him at the time of election. Next, many citizens and councilmen have little to no contact with one another. This problem is often associated with the socioeconomic status of the citizens. Individuals who are upper class are more likely to be involved with the contact of council member when it comes to city issues, where as a citizen of middle or lower class status would not. Another issue on accountability is that becoming a new member of city council is hard because during elections they are defeated by former council members. Most citizens do not vote for new members in fear that they will make a drastic change or will not make any change. Lastly, city council member retire without the knowledge of the community and new members are appointed to fill the positions. These various issues …show more content…
They are professionals who often have degrees in business or political science and specialize in public administration. They often relocate for career advancement opportunities. City managers are often hired to make sure policies are carried out properly and effectively. There are two types of city managers policy and administrative. Policy managers are city managers who provide community leadership through their recommendations to their councils on a wide variety matters (Dye & MacManus, 2012, p. 385). Administrative managers are city managers who restrict themselves to the supervision of the municipal bureaucracy and avoid innovating policy recommendation particularly in controversial areas (Dye & MacManus, 2012, p. 385). Many city managers identify themselves as Policy

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Bureaucracy is the other side of the coin, defined as : “a system for controlling or managing a country, company, or organization that is operated by a large number of officials employed to follow rules carefully”(“Bureaucracy Definition,” 2015), this means that those who support a Public Administration system that is fully bureaucratic want those who are most qualified appointed by those in power to care for the country(Crew, 1992). This push and pull of systems has plagued Public administration since the start and never seems to fully get answered(Burke & Cleary, 1989). There are scholars who believe that the greatest system is a combination of both and these three systems are what we will be examining in this literature review. Democracy is the system that most commonly the public thinks of when they think of Public Administration and public service.…

    • 1351 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The relationship between the State and Federal governments is complex and they are broken up into many different parts. Also the State and Federal Governments have different amounts of influence over the economy and the citizens. Another thing is that the government system and relationship between the two is very complex and controversial. This paper will discuss the relationship between the State and Federal governments and the complexity of the systems of government.…

    • 1129 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    City of Minneapolis: Committee of the Whole Planning Commission The City of Minneapolis City Planning Commission’s ‘Committee of the Whole’ is a meeting that occurs at Minneapolis City Hall twice per month. The objective of these meetings is to provide a public forum where City staff and project applicants can discuss proposals in an official forum outside of the public hearing process. My particular meeting occurred at 4:30 PM on September 22nd, 2016. The vice president of the Planning Commission chairs the public meeting and leads the nine other commissioners through the meeting agenda. At my meeting, there were only six commissioners in attendance, including the vice president.…

    • 1681 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    1) If you were assigned to draft a news release to accompany Sludge to Blackrock City Council meeting on April 11, which items would you use in your lead (i.e., who, what, when, why, where, when, how)? I would have use items 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, and 18 because the public is aware of the plants' and what out come will come from it and air pollution cause. 2) Which items would you avoid using in the news release? I personally would have avoided using it and Raina has received many complaints. Also that Raina is not concerned about the air pollution and i don't think that they wants to make thing go correct.…

    • 240 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Texas County Government

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The County judge is the presiding officer. He or she gets elected in an at-large election. This mean everyone in the county can participate in this election. The commissioners court is the chief policy making body for the county.(Flores,2)The major functions of the commissioners court include: passing a county budget and setting tax rates, maintain courthouses, jails, and other county building, maintaining county roads and other infrastructure, managing county helath and welfare programs, and running and funding elections.…

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Whitley County Case Study

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages

    For example, the Judge executive spend time on policy development while the County project director who is Amber Owens handle the day to day business of the County government. She is the one in charges of the different funds and controlled what has to be…

    • 456 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Texas Government

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages

    These are the city manager, the strong mayor-based council, and the weak mayor-based council. They deal with elections for cumulative voting systems, as well as law enforcement procedures and other issues. Texas does not have township. Instead, it has incorporated and unincorporated cities. These cities can be ‘home-rule’ or ‘general-rule,’ and the local government has authority on road maintenance and law enforcement (McCleskey, 99).…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Padilla Mauricio Padilla 1912257 2017 SP GOVT-2306-73011 Local Control in Texas May 7, 2017 Control in Texas The control in Texas is mostly in the power of the state government because if a local government makes a law to ban a certain thing the state can make a law staying that, that thing cannot be banned. People wonder why the State government makes laws that are against what the local want and “the answer is money.” (White) Just from the natural resource industries the states representatives receive “3.8 million” (White) which would be an average of 25,000 per person and that is why they made a law that local cities cannot ban fracking from the cities.…

    • 793 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Danielle Broder POL 240 Fall 2015 A Review of The Potential for Public Empowerment through Government Organized Participation by Neal D. Buckwalter. Section One: This article develops a far better theoretical understanding of the linkage between the processes and results related to government-organized public participation, Moreover as its potential to convey power to citizens in guiding administrative decisions. Special focus is given to those factors that form the development and maintenance of the citizen–administrator relationship.…

    • 1291 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Should a Wooster man looking to run for state representative as a nonpartisan candidate be allowed on the ballot after engaging in partisan activity? That’s a question the Wayne County Board of Elections will have to answer when it holds a hearing 10:30 a.m. April 5 to hear from Stephen Spoonamore about why he voted on a Democratic Party ballot minutes after filing petitions to run as a nonpartisan candidate in the District 1 state representative race. Scott Wiggam is the Republican nominee, having defeated David Kiefer in the primary, and no Democrat filed to run for the seat.…

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    It has been a problem for voting for local officials. People do not really hear about the elections that are going on or they simply do not care. Free riding is really in the fore front of this problem. It can be easy for individuals to free ride and let others make the…

    • 1743 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Legislative Meeting

    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages

    After only attending a municipality meeting once in high school for a civics paper, I was really blown away by the level of professionalism and efficiency that took place at this legislative meeting. Although it would be unfair of me to compare the small Dallas Township Municipal meeting with the Legislative session that took place at the Historic Courthouse that evening on February 21st at six o’clock. I really didn’t know what to expect for the most part, but once the meeting began I was able to use what information we had covered in class to help understand and put into words what legislation went through the County Council. To my surprise, a portion of the meeting felt like it was straight from a popular late night television special highlighting…

    • 788 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This practice also discourages members of that community to participate because the candidate that they want never gets…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Np Us Meeting Analysis

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The system has a formal structure were there are elected offices by the residents. Each neighborhood planning unit meeting that the author attended showed a clear sense of power by its officers. The officers had the power to either approve…

    • 666 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Under the weak mayor system, voters elect council members and a mayor with limitations on his or her powers. The mayor presides over council meetings, but council members oversee various municipal departments such as public safety, planning, finance and parks. In some cities, the mayor has sought more power by asking voters to allow him or her to do more than be the presiding council member. This could lead the way to a strong mayor-council system, but actually strong mayor was seen as a panacea for municipal corruption at the end of the 1890s. This means the voters elected council members with certain powers a strong mayor is elected who can prepare budgets, veto council votes and have a great deal of influence over various municipal departments.…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays