Property tax revenues, the largest share of general fund revenues for the City of Atlanta, Georgia - and most cities - has fallen greatly in recent years. In response, the city has executed revenue that have helped it actually exceed its anticipated revenue.
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Like the country it governs, Washington is a city of extremes. In a car, you can zip in bare moments from northwest District of Columbia, its streets lined with million-dollar homes and palatial embassies, its inhabitants sporting one of the nation's lowest jobless rates, to Anacostia, a mostly forgotten neighborhood in southeastern D.C. with one of the highest unemployment rates anywhere in America. Or, if you happen to be jobless...
]]>Cities exist for people; freeways exist for moving vehicles. Cities are centers of culture and commerce that rely on attracting private investment. Massive public spending on freeways in the last century reduced the capacity of cities to connect people and support culture and commerce. While the following report is about urban highways, more importantly, it is about cities and people. It is about community vision and the leadership required in the twenty-first century to overcome the demolition, dislocation, and disconnection of neighborhoods caused by freeways in cities.
This report chronicles the stories of five very different cities that became stronger after freeways were removed or reconsidered. They demonstrate that fixing cities harmed by freeways, and improving public transport, involves a range of context-specific and context-sensitive solutions. This perspective contrasts with the one-size-fits-all approach that was used in the 1950s and 1960s to push freeways through urban neighborhoods. The belief then was that freeways would reduce congestion and improve safety in cities. Remarkably, these two reasons are still commonly used to rationalize spending large sums of public money on expanding existing or building new freeways.
]]>On January 1, 2012, the Town of Seneca Falls became a unified municipality for the first time since 1831. Communities across New York State have their eye on Seneca Falls to see what lessons can be learned from the dissolution of the historic village. As the largest village to dissolve in New York State, the process and outcomes will serve as a great test case for many years to come. However, some may be prone to draw conclusions from the outcomes that aren't warranted.
]]>The annual Best-Performing Cities index provides an objective, comprehensive measure of economic performance across metropolitan areas of the country. As the nation begins to recover from the Great Recession, the underlying structural performance of individual regional economies comes back into focus.
Determining which communities are recovering at the fastest pace and which weathered the recession best provides a framework for understanding the opportunities and related risks. Only a handful of communities have seen employment rebound to prerecession peaks; these regions are poised to capture a bigger share of the impending expansion. We include measures of job, wage, and technology performance over a five-year period to capture the structural elements in our Best-Performing Cities index.
Among this year's key findings:
• Texas metros continued to dominate the rankings, taking four of the Top 5 positions and nine of the Top
25. Overall, Texas employers were responsible for one of every five jobs created in the nation from June
2010 to June 2011.
• San Antonio, Texas, secured the top spot among the nation's 200 large metros, while last year's leader,
Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, Texas, slid to fifth.
• Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, Texas, was the top performer among the country's 10 largest metros and
ranked 16th overall.
• Logan, Utah-Idaho, topped the small cities list after placing 19th last year.
• Merced, Calif., recorded the biggest jump in ranking, leaping 105 positions to 63rd.
From the abstract:
Public service providers everywhere are hearing the calls for government transformation, and a new wave of rightsizing initiatives has emerged under related concepts such as reengineering, restructuring and reorganization. With the scholarly literature largely focused on cases where cutback management has been practiced in recent decades, governments have been left to grapple with unsustainable fiscal and operational systems without any overarching logic, or guideposts, for change. Nowhere is this more evident than in the city of Detroit, where a swirl of initiatives in this decade has invoked different and potentially competing concepts of rightsizing: one, centered on comprehensive planning of the scope of local government, looking at its functions and organization; a second, centered on streamlining business processes within existing functions and organizations; and a third centered on consolidating the built environment so that public services can be more efficiently configured. Without adjusting the mix of service responsibilities within and across jurisdictions overlapping an area, it is hard to imagine that sustainable reforms of service delivery systems will be realized. A broad-based definition of the sources of a jurisdiction's problems must be demonstrated through data-driven analysis, so that all stakeholders can be engaged around a common roadmap for action.
From the press release:
Job growth for nearly all of the nation's metro areas will increase this year but not fast enough to force the unemployment rate below 8 percent, according to a report produced by IHS Global Insight as part of the US Conference of Mayors' US Metro Economy series.
The Report released today, forecasts job growth for all metro areas but mild to weak for many, and predicts that 22% of metro areas hardest hit by housing crisis will take five years to recover....
...The outlook for 2012 is better. By the end of this year, the report forecasts that almost every one of our 363 metro economies will see job gains and the nation will have gained back 48 percent of its lost jobs. But despite this progress, the recovery remains slow and uneven. For almost 80 of the nation's metro areas, it will take more than five years to get back to pre-recession levels of employment.
The report offers a glimpse into what middle-class families are going through in this economy: median real income for US households in 2010 was $49,455 - 7.1% lower than in 1999, when it was $53,252.
See also:
Key findings
With just a few exceptions, the places at the top of this list have among the most expensive housing in the country. But average wages and salaries are substantially higher, enabling them to more than compensate.
Topping the list is the San Jose metro area, where the average resident has nearly $4,000 a month ($3,901)--or $46,812 per year--left over after paying for housing. Durham, North Carolina (with $3,513 per month), is next followed by greater Washington, D.C. ($3,431), and greater San Francisco ($3,342). Pricey metros such as New York, Boston, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Denver also number among the top 25.
College towns like Boulder, Corvallis, Ann Arbor, Champaign-Urbana, and Ithaca also do quite well, although it's worth noting that one college town, State College, Pa., is near the very bottom of the list.
Then, there are some surprises. People in greater Detroit, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Syracuse, Buffalo, and Rochester have a substantial amount of money left over after their housing is paid for; more than their counterparts in San Diego or Raleigh.
]]>From the abstract:
How have environmental initiatives and "going green" permeated the human resources realm? This article, through a nationwide survey, examines the extent to which cities have incorporated environmentally friendly human resource practices. Results reveal that income, education, environmental awareness and presence of preexisting successful environmental programs have an impact on technical and strategic human resource practices in U.S. cities. This article discusses the implications for public administration.
From the summary:
In 2011, the world continued to experience instability due to the enduring economic crisis. Economic uncertainty helped provoke social and political unrest of varying degrees in many urban areas. Protests and strikes in numerous North American and Western European cities have been largely peaceful. But violence - and, in places, civil war - have broken out in other regions, endangering the safety of both locals and expatriates....Those cities and countries that have escaped the brunt of social unrest and economic downturn have been able to continue investing in urban infrastructure and other provisions for comfortable and enjoyable daily living to improve the quality of living for their residents. If economic and political instability remain a global factor, cities in parts of Asia-Pacific and Western Europe, as well as in Canada, will continue to benefit from their relative stability and wealth of public services and recreational provisions, becoming more attractive destinations for expatriate employees.
Americas:
Canadian cities dominate the top of the ranking for this region. Vancouver (5) has the best quality of living and is followed by Ottawa (14), Toronto (15) and Montreal (22). Honolulu (29) and San Francisco (30) are the highest-ranking US cities. In Central and South America, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe (63), ranks highest, followed by San Juan, Puerto Rico (72), and Montevideo, Uruguay (77). Port-au-Prince, Haiti (218), ranks lowest in the region.
From the abstract:
The union movement as a whole has helped ensure that workers throughout the economy - not just those in unions - share in economic growth, have decent wages and benefits, have good training, and are protected by health and safety regulations. But do public sector unions also bargain for provisions that more directly benefit the community? This report, based on interviews, contract analyses and a review of the literature, finds that collective bargaining contracts often contain such broadly beneficial elements. Some key examples include safety officers negotiating for provisions that speed response times or keep skills up to date, teachers negotiating for more effective discipline or more enrichment classes, and nurses negotiating for better staffing ratios, which improve patient care. This report finds that community well-being is often enhanced when public sector workers have a voice to improve their own work conditions and the quality of services they deliver.
See also:
- Press release
- Executive summary
From the press release:
The nation's cities are cutting personnel and infrastructure projects as the economic downturn continues to take its toll on city finances according to the National League of Cities' (NLC) 26th annual City Fiscal Conditions report.
The report reveals that general city revenues are continuing to fall, with a projected -2.3% decrease by the end of 2011. This is the fifth straight year of declines in revenue with probable further declines in 2012.
The revenue decline is mainly due to the suppressed property market that is negatively impacting property tax revenue. Property tax collections are expected to decline by -3.7% with further declines likely in 2012 and 2013.
Income tax receipts are also experiencing a decrease of -1.6%. Sales tax receipts remained largely flat, but this is at last year's level which saw the worst decrease in sales tax revenue in 15 years.
Cities are responding by cutting personnel (72%), delaying infrastructure projects (60%) and increasing service fees (41%). One in three (36%) cities report modifications to employee health care benefits.
]]>From the press release:
The report examines the impact of the nonprofit exemption on government
finances and tax rates and various approaches for mitigating that impact....The report explores a full array of options, including elimination of the exemption. Ultimately, it recommends establishing a more restrictive framework for exemptions; improving administration; taxing nonprofits at a reduced level; and imposing service charges....The report explores four options: voluntary payments of lieu of taxes, or PILOTs, from nonprofit institutions; a state program to reimburse local governments for revenue lost due to nonprofit exemptions; taxing nonprofit-owned property at a reduced level; and service fees.
Related:
New Orleans mayor abandons for the coming year efforts to make some nonprofit groups pay property taxes
Source: Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune, December 20, 2011