• One-third of the city's streetlights were turned off.
• The city stopped mowing the medians in the streets.
• The parks department budget was gutted from $17 million in 2009 to just $3 million this year.
• The city has cut some 550 employees from its work force by eliminating positions or through outright layoffs.
• Municipal bus service has been reduced by 100,000 hours, meaning buses no longer run in the evenings or on weekends.
• In addition to selling off helicopters, the police department has slashed its ranks.

It's a crisis, to be sure. But in this politically conservative, tax-averse town, it's also something of an experiment. After the impending cuts were announced in fall 2009, the city put a property tax increase on the November ballot. With their vote, residents made it clear they'd rather suffer service cuts than see their taxes raised.

City Councilmember Sean Paige is one person who thinks scaling back government's role in the Springs is a good thing. 'I think the citizens have made it clear that this is the government people are willing to pay for right now. So let's make it work.'"

• Commodity price increases, primarily in electricity, chemicals and natural gas costs, which are leading contributors to operating and maintenance costs of water and wastewater facilities.
• Lower consumption and high fixed cost. In general, demand or a consumer's use is declining while many utility costs, such as debt service, are fixed. Because most pricing structures include volume-based charges, revenues are declining while costs are not.
• Benefits. Pension obligations and health care benefits are prompting an increase in labor costs.
• Influence of wastewater legal action. Significant capital programs are being implemented in most major cities to comply with legal action related to wastewater system performance.
• Aging infrastructure. Updating and replacing aging infrastructure are significant costs for most water and sewer utilities.

The new brief finds that many jurisdictions are making sweeping changes in their retiree health care plans, such as eliminating or planning to eliminate retiree health benefits for new hires (39 percent); increasing or planning to increase the years of service required to vest (36 percent); and increasing the retirement age (11 percent)."

Contract road services have been a boon to King County, Wash., says Linda Dougherty, director of the county's roads division. The county of 1.9 million residents provides $17.6 million in annual contract work to 37 cities, including Seattle.

The contract road services program allows the county to maintain an extensive equipment fleet and 600 full-time positions, many of which would be seasonal positions otherwise, Dougherty says. 'It really allows us to realize purchasing economies of scale,' she says. 'These large fleets of heavy equipment enable us to provide a more regional level of response during emergency situations.'"

"Six years ago, the Memphis, Tenn., Police Department (MPD) decided to use technology to look into the future. Since 2006, with IBM predictive analytics technology, the MPD has reduced crime by 31 percent, including a reduction of 15.4 percent in violent crime, according to MPD officials."

More from Government Technology

Drivers Behaving Badly: Behavioral Economics Offers Strategies for Improving Transportation

"Driving in traffic, one is often hard-pressed to think of fellow travelers as rational. They swerve across multiple lanes to make a turn, race to get to the next red light, slow to ogle fender-benders and engage in other roadway antics. Yet for the most part transportation planners and policymakers treat drivers-as well as transit riders and other travelers-as basically rational.  

A growing body of research is concluding otherwise. Some transportation planners and engineers are beginning to draw upon psychological experiments cataloguing these patterns of behavior-as well as their own experience about real world travel-to find creative ways to discourage roadway antics and other bad travel choices and improve infrastructure design."

More from InTransition Magazine

"A unanimous Supreme Court held today that the Fourth Amendment does not protect the privacy of text messages that a government employee sends by an electronic paging device.

The case concerns the Ontario, Calif., Police Department's review of text messages sent and received by Sgt. Jeff Quon, a member of the department's SWAT team."

Beach Restoration Project Not a Taking of Private Property

"The U.S. Supreme Court held today that Florida's Supreme Court did not violate the Constitution's regulatory takings clause when it upheld a plan to create a state-owned public beach between private waterfront land and the Gulf of Mexico.

Under the state's Beach and Shore Preservation Act, counties and cities can restore beaches eroded by hurricanes and storms by adding sand beyond a state-designated erosion control line -- separating private property from the state's property. After doing so, the new sand becomes public beach because the projects are funded with state and federal dollars."

Or does it?

What dictates whether a driver hits the brakes at a yellow light or races through it? A new study by University of Cincinnati doctoral student Zhixia Li identifies factors influencing the split-second decision that follows what he refers to as the 'yellow light dilemma.'

He found that lane position, type of vehicle, travel speed, speed limit and light timing all influence drivers' reactions to yellow lights."

The Urbanophile, Aaron M. Renn, was there for a presentation recently, and posted this tour."

The city is struggling to figure out how to close a projected deficit of $42 million in the fiscal year that starts July 1. One of the solutions the City Council is considering is placing two measures on the November ballot that would raise $20.6 million in tax revenues.

But the council is increasingly reluctant to rely on the assumption that those measures will pass, according to a memo to city department heads from City Administrator Dan Lindheim."

Pei's plan, which included the demolition of more than 500 buildings, was despised by the city's locals and outdated in the end, and met its demise in the late 1980s.

A major exhibit of the plan, including a model created by Pei and his firm, is being put on display at the Cox Convention Center starting Monday.

'The Pei model is a window in time to better understand where we were, where we thought we were going and what we used to think,' (OU Architecture Professor Hans) Butzer said. 'It is rare to revisit something so sweeping as the Pei Plan, and the model allows us to see the history of our downtown renovation.'"

• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Los Angeles, California
• Sacramento, California
• Fort Lauderdale, Florida
• Atlanta, Georgia
• Boise, Idaho
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Baltimore, Maryland
• Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Cincinnati, Ohio
• Columbus, Ohio
• Lake Oswego, Oregon
• Providence, Rhode Island
• Dallas, Texas
• Fort Worth, Texas
• San Antonio, Texas
• Salt Lake City, Utah
• Arlington, Virginia
• Kenosha, Wisconsin
• Tucson, Arizona
• Washington, D.C.

John Wirchanski, whose family has owned the land known as Hall's Corner for centuries, . . . argued that the city can't abandon the project when crews already have dug up some of the property and taken down a barn and more than 30 mature trees.

Union County Common Pleas Judge Don Fraser sided with him, ruling late yesterday afternoon that Dublin has taken possession of Wirchanski's land and that he will not have to repay the city."

This article examines the differences between the responding local governments with a Moody's Aaa bond rating and other respondents. Moody's has given Aaa ratings to 133 municipalities and counties, 45 of which responded to the 'State of the Profession' survey. The responses of the 45 Aaa communities are compared with the 2,169 local governments that responded to the survey and do not have a Moody's Aaa rating."

The National League of Cities (NLC) has long called for passage of legislation to address problems associated with different credit rating scales for different securities. Legislation eliminating dual ratings was included in the comprehensive Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed by the House of Representatives in December 2009. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) also included bond rating parity in the financial services reform bill he unveiled last month. 

'With the handwriting on the wall, we're pleased the rating agencies are voluntarily moving to rate municipal government bonds on their ability to repay their debt and their historically low rate of default,' said Robin Beltramini, council member, Troy, Mich., and chair of NLC's Finance, Administration and Intergovernmental Relations Committee (FAIR). 'As FAIR has said, doing so will allow new investors to participate in the municipal securities market.'"

These companies are getting a jump on a major cultural and demographic shift away from suburban sprawl. The change is imminent, and businesses that don't understand and plan for it may suffer in the long run.

To put it simply, the suburbs have lost their sheen: Both young workers and retiring Boomers are actively seeking to live in densely packed, mixed-use communities that don't require cars-that is, cities or revitalized outskirts in which residences, shops, schools, parks, and other amenities exist close together. 'In the 1950s, suburbs were the future,' says University of Michigan architecture and urban-planning professor Robert Fishman, commenting on the striking cultural shift. 'The city was then seen as a dingy environment. But today it's these urban neighborhoods that are exciting and diverse and exploding with growth.'"

But all of that has changed. To visit either airport today is to find closed-off gates and half-empty corridors.

Both airports also illustrate the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't dilemma many cities face these days. With huge tracts of land and expensive facilities, airports are a region's economic linchpin -- they are essential to businesses that need easy access to the world. Yet airports are at the mercy of airlines -- private companies focused on profit-making and caught up in one of the planet's most competitive and unpredictable business environments."

The findings include:

• Cautious optimism expressed about future economic growth:  When asked to project the growth in their local government's economic base over the next five years, 53% believed they would achieve 'slow growth' (less than 10%) while 21% believed they would achieve 'moderate growth' (10-25%).  Nearly 18% indicated that their jurisdiction's growth would remain 'stable' (no growth or decline), and only 6% forecasted a decline.
• Responsibility for economic development on public sector shoulders:  In approximately two thirds of the responding localities, the local government was the main engine for economic development, versus 20% of communities in which a nonprofit development corporation had lead responsibility. 
• Disconnect between budgeting and economic development: When asked if the local government budget allocation process was linked to economic development priorities, nearly 58% of respondents said 'no,' and only 42% said 'yes.'
• Common barriers to economic development include fiscal woes and lack/cost of land:  When asked what barriers to economic development their jurisdiction had encountered, the three most common responses were 'cost of land' (53%), 'availability of land' (52%), and 'lack of capital/funding' (50%)."

Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based demographer and author, thinks that places like Portland, San Francisco and Boston have become 'elite cities,' attractive to the young and single, especially those with trust funds, but beyond the reach of middle-class families who want a house with a lawn. Indeed Portland, for all its history of Western grit, is remarkably white, young and childless. Most Americans will therefore continue to migrate to the more affordable 'cities of aspiration' such as Houston, Atlanta or Phoenix, thinks Mr Kotkin. As they do so, they may turn decentralised sprawl into quilts of energetic suburbs with a community feeling.

That is not to belittle Portland's vision. It is a sophisticated and forward-looking place. Which other city can boast that its main attraction is a bustling independent book store (Powell's) and that medical students can go from one part of their campus to another by gondola, taking their bikes with them? Other cities will see much to emulate. Adam Davis of Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, a Portland polling firm, says that Oregonians like to consider themselves leaders but also exceptions. They are likely to remain both."

By 2005 . . . a growing number of officials in Denver - and at the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in Washington, D.C. - were interested in changing that. Officials wondered what would happen if police responding to routine criminal acts - like commercial and residential burglaries, and auto theft - started looking for and analyzing DNA evidence. That year, the NIJ announced a five-site grant project to find out."

The new website tool is called VIP, or the Virtual Interactive Planner. The planning department has seen a significant reduction in phone calls since the tool went online in January.

So what can you actually do on the site? You can go in and actually type in an address, a parcel number or a real estate number and you can set up a development scenario where you say, 'This is my property, and I want to develop it as a convenience store.' And it will take that decision-making tool and walk you through all the processes. It will show you all the steps that you'll have to do, and here's an explanation of every one in great detail such as when the public can speak and when they can't, your fees, what the town looks for when approving it, what you can appeal if you don't like the decision, and what the outcome is going to be."

• Detroit is Big. The city of Detroit has 912,062 people, making the city still the 11th largest in the United States. Detroit has 100,000 more people than San Francisco and is 50% bigger than Boston.
• Detroit is Dense. The city of Detroit has 6,571 people per square mile. That's almost 60% more dense than Portland, Oregon (4,152). Detroit's density is roughly comparable to Seattle (7,136) and Minneapolis (6,969).
• Detroit Has Money. There are 18,140 households in Detroit with income over $100,000 per year. Milwaukee, hardly a basket case, has 19,297.
• Detroit Has Immigrants. While over 350,000 domestic migrants left the region, Detroit metro saw nearly 100,000 new international migrants move in during the 2000's."

The national professional associations have now looked at this issue and a new gold standard for governance practices has emerged. The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA), whose membership includes public pension plan officers as well as thousands of CFOs for public employers and plan sponsors, has issued recommended governance practices that provide clear guidance to pension trustees and administrators on how to manage their business affairs. It is by far the most comprehensive and thoughtful document now available to pension managers and fiduciaries and should be reviewed by every board in the country at least annually."

Virtually all economists say they should. But the reason they don't is a combination of history and politics. When sales taxes were established many decades ago, they tended to ignore services, which were then a far smaller segment of the economy. As the service sector has grown, bringing services into the fold has proven quite difficult. Service providers that legislators are targeting tend to oppose proposals to expand the sales tax. Maybe hot air balloonists don't have much influence, but lawyers, doctors and real estate agents do. Sales taxes apply to some services, but generally not the most lucrative ones.

The question now is whether that's about to change. Lawmakers in Arizona, California, Michigan and Pennsylvania have discussed taxing services within the last year. States face such unappealing choices between cutting core government services and raising taxes that suddenly broadening the sales taxes may, in comparison, look like a politically palatable way to balance the budget."

According to Dow Jones Newswires, City Controller Daniel C. Miller said Wednesday it's 'very likely' that the city will miss the $637,500 payment to Covanta Holdings, which was hired to run the incinerator. The city is reportedly trying to work out a loan-payment deal with Covanta."

It may sound like science fiction, but the idea of a living, sentient city -- one in which managers use real-time data to respond to events as they occur -- isn't the stuff of fantasy anymore. By creating intricately linked networks of cameras and sensors throughout an urban area, cities in the U.S. and elsewhere are already making great strides toward tracking weather conditions and traffic flow, to name a few, and then using that data to govern more effectively."

Until late last year, however, it lacked a significant public transportation element, unsurprising since the capital of this Plains state has never had the concentration of employment or housing to make the implementation of major new transit lines truly necessary.

But Republican Mayor Mick Cornett liked the idea of integrating a streetcar into the redevelopment plans, and so he worked to include it in a referendum approved by voters last December, pushing a $130 million public transportation plan towards reality.

Yesterday, Oklahoma City councilors endorsed a partnership with the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments with the goal of determining where exactly the streetcars will run, and how they'll be integrated into the existing and future transportation system at a new centralized transit hub. It will be the first serious plan for transit improvements in this city in forty years."

As part of the city's Open Data Initiative (ODI), the 100 data sets released include information regarding crime, building permits, parks, transportation, liquor license applications and more."

States and local governments also have made significant changes in their benefit offerings.  Half of the respondents, human resources professionals, report that their governments have made changes to their health care plans.  Among the 21 percent whose governments have changed their retirement plans, 73 percent say the changes have not affected current workers and 60 percent say the changes have not affected new hires."

Hosting a large sporting event potentially offers both direct and indirect economic benefits. Direct benefits include capital and infrastructure construction related to the event, long-term benefits such as lower transportation costs thanks to an improved road or rail network, and spending by tourists who travel from out of town to attend the games. Indirect benefits may include advertising effects that showcase the host city or country as a potential tourist destination or business location in the future and an increase in civic pride, local sense of community, and the perceived stature of the host city or country. But there is also a potential downside, resulting from possible cost overruns, poor land use, inadequate planning, and underutilized facilities."

'I think we expect everything,' (Georgia State University professor Katherine Willoughby) said in an interview with the AJC. 'We expect wonderful, superior health care, clean streets, beautiful water, protection, wonderful schools, comprehensive support, you know, day care, a good job. People have high expectations, and it's very expensive to do all that stuff. Now we've had the come to Jesus meeting,' she said. 'We've got to sit down at the table and have a real honest discussion.'

Those discussions are taking place across the full spectrum of public agencies and services. To assess the way they are likely to change in the next few years, the AJC analyzed several specific areas of government."

Tentative Schedule:

• March 25 Nonpartisan vs. Partisan Elections
• April 1 Nonpartisan vs. Partisan Elections
• April 8 Third Party Candidates
• April 15 Third Party Candidates
• April 22 Campaign Finance
• April 29 Campaign Finance
• May 6 Run-off Elections
• May 13 Run-off Elections
• May 20 Discuss and outline recommendations and report
• May 27 Draft final report
• June 10 Finalize and present final report

All meetings will be held on Thursdays at 2:00 p.m. in room 411, unless otherwise posted.

• Local Service Delivery.  Twenty-four local governments report a public safety department, which is a consolidated police and fire service.
• Salary Information. The average entrance salaries are $42,841 for police and $39,996 for fire personnel. Including longevity pay, the average maximum salary for police officers is $63,868 and for fire personnel is $58,771.
• Per Capita Costs. The average per capita costs for expenses on personnel, capital outlay on items such as land and equipment, and other departmental expenditures are $269.63 for police departments and $164.34 for fire departments. 
• Personnel per 1,000. Per 1,000 residents, the average number of uniformed sworn personnel for police is 2.16 and for fire is 1.60.
• Uniformed Personnel. The average central city police department (employs) 385 full-time paid personnel. Similarly, central city fire departments average 205 full-time paid personnel.

The full summary of the survey results is available here.

These 10 rules are common to all of the parliamentary procedure authorities.

1.  The organization is paramount compared with the individual.
2.  All members are equal.
3.  A quorum must be present to conduct business legally.
4.  Only one main proposal may be considered at a time.
5.  Only one member may speak at a time.
6.  Debate is allowed on all motions, unless forbidden.
7.  Parliamentary law insists on dignity in debate.
8.  A question, once decided, cannot come back for reconsideration during the same session.
9.  A majority vote decides, unless a greater percentage is called for.
10.  Most organizations name a parliamentary authority in their bylaws."

Under the deal, Citizens Energy Group, a public charitable trust and local provider of gas, steam and chilled water, would acquire Indianapolis' water and sewer utilities, which now are owned by the city and run by private operators. Citizens would and have full control over their operations and be responsible for hundreds of million in capital projects in coming years."

A few leading local governments around the country have started to chart a different course, earning both economic and political rewards. This report focuses primarily on these success stories and what we can learn from them."

'These online travel companies are involved in a very slick scheme where local governments end up losing tax money ... for schools, police officers and firefighters,' Larry Jones, assistant director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said Friday."

Click the link below to read the article from the Dallas Morning News.

In addition to sales taxes, the City of Tulsa collects "an excise tax of five percent (5%) upon the gross proceeds or gross receipts derived from the rent from every occupancy of a room or rooms in a hotel in this City."  In the original FY10 budget, the hotel tax was projected to generate $6.2 million -- 60% of which is committed to the Convention Fund, for debt service on the Convention Center and related purposes, and 38% of which is dedicated to the Economic Development Commission Fund, to promote economic activities.

"150:  The number of Yellow Cab Co. drivers who will be teaming up with police, reporting crimes and suspicious activity they see while driving around Colorado Springs, Colo. Yellow Cab dispatchers will have direct access to police to pass on information from drivers and to alert drivers about people or vehicles for which officers are searching. The Police Department is dealing with budget cuts that have left positions vacant and curtailed its ability to catch criminals."

"County leaders in Georgia are concerned that not all businesses are submitting sales taxes. To figure out where there may be missing funds, four counties participated in a pilot in which county lists of business licenses were cross-checked with the state department of revenue's list of businesses with sales tax accounts. In Hall County, almost 1,000 businesses were not present on the department of revenue's list, reports The Gainesville Times, suggesting that there are businesses not submitting sales tax to the state. House Democratic Leader DuBose Porter estimated that the amount of tax missing could equate to $250 million, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Hall County officials are using some of the findings in the pilot study to encourage local sales tax collecting."

An analysis of how this reserve might have worked, if it had been in place since 1996, shows that the City would have been able to draw $12 million from the reserve this year, avoiding layoffs and pay cuts, leaving $12 million in reserve for FY2011.

This concept is being reviewed and will be back for further discussion in a few weeks.  A Charter amendment would require voter approval.

Paramedics and emergency medical technicians (in Denver) and around the country say a substantial number of emergency calls aren't emergencies at all but medical situations best handled in a doctor's office."

Click the link below to read the article from the Denver Post.

According to data provided by EMSA, about 16% of all ambulance transports in the Tulsa area are non-emergencies.

Several dozen cities dug themselves out of a hole by re-engineering their property tax. They reduced taxes on homes and other buildings and raised taxes on land. Pennsylvania's capital city demonstrates the potency of this medicine."