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Section II
Considerations with City Planning
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4
Prioritizing City Services
Introduction
A city is meant to provide a safe, thriving environment for people to live and to care for their families. Services are provided with the goal of fostering a positive environment that will entice people to live and work in the city. What is the best way to provide the most effective services while staying within budget? How does one determine which city services are the most important in enhancing a cityâs functionality?
One way to answer these questions is to determine what people desire in their community. Determining what people want in their community can depend on examining what people are seeking when they are ready to purchase or rent their next home. The real estate site Realtor.com published the following indicators of a neighborhood on the upswing:
- âNeat Neighborsâ, or home owners who maintained their properties;
- âQuiet Streetsâ, that is neighborhoods located far away from heavy traffic, highways, railroads, and airports;
- âProximity to Vital Servicesâ, which included schools, medical facilities, public transportation and major highways, grocery stores and shopping centers, recreational facilities, and safe outdoor parks;
- âPicture Perfect Viewsâ, which were defined as the ability to see natural or man-made beauty such as mountains, waterways, greenbelts, or cityscapes;
- âSafe Statsâ, or strong neighborhood security that includes low crime rates, well-lit roads and sidewalks, and the absence of graffiti.
- âTips from a Neighborhood Specialistâ, or experienced real estate agent who understands current home market values, the history of the house and neighborhood, local amenities, and potential hazards.
(Tom, 2014)
Another article provided on the real estate site Mortgaid.com describes the qualities of a good neighborhood:
- Economic Health, which includes the availability of jobs and growing opportunities for employment
- Amenities and Facilities, which includes good roads, parks, natural views, proximity to schools, shopping, restaurants, houses of worship, good transportation, playgrounds, and recreational areas.
- Schools and College System, defined as proximity to quality schools for families to send their children
- Crime Rate, in that a good neighborhood has a low crime rate
- Stability, which means that what exists now will remain so in the future. People do not want to buy homes near a quiet field if that land is going to be developed into a high-rise apartment or a shopping mall.
- Pride of Ownership, defined as well maintained homes and neighborhoods, freedom from blight, disrepair, and degradation.
(Mortg(aid), 2016)
If real estate agents routinely provide this sort of advice to potential home buyers, this can have enormous repercussions on a city in decline. As we have seen with Detroit and many other Rust Belt cities, citizens who can afford to leave a declining city will do so. The tax base diminishes and with it city services and city quality. City managers must ask themselves if all parts of their city meet the âhome buyerâsâ criteria. If there are parts of a city that do not meet the criteria, what can be done to rectify the deficiency? More importantly, how can city managers in vibrant, healthy cities maintain this status when citizens are calling for tax cuts? How can these citizens be convinced that tax revenues directly correlate to city quality? And for those managers who preside over failed cities, how can they utilize what few resources they have to revitalize services? In short, which services should receive priority?
To answer these questions, it helps to revisit the qualities of a good community. What would it take to convince a âneighborhood specialistâ, i.e., real estate agent, that the city is a safe and worthy investment for a potential home owner? A real estate agentâs list of âmust-havesâ for a community can be summarized into the following areas:
- Infrastructure: well-maintained properties and strong standards
- Security: low crime rates
- Amenities: good schools, economic opportunity, shopping, transportation, playgrounds, green space, entertainment
At minimum, investment in these areas can lay the foundation of a functioning city that will entice people to live and work there. As the tax revenues increase, additional services can follow.
Typically, municipal spending falls into four general categories: administration, infrastructure, security, and amenities. Administration, which is comprised of municipal leadership and support staff, includes but is not limited to the city council and/or mayor, legal services, human resources, city finances, budget office, and risk management. Infrastructure can include utilities, city planning and zoning, public works, sanitation/recycling, building inspections, and property standards/code compliance. Security pertains to police, fire, emergency management, animal services, environmental health, and municipal court/judiciary. Amenities include everything else: convention or visitorâs center, schools, economic development, libraries, community engagement, parks and recreation, arts and performance, and entertainment. Before administrators can prioritize spending, it is useful to place all city services into one of these four categories. Then the categories themselves can be prioritized.
Administration
Cities in the United States have the presence of formal leadership. The leadership consists of elected officials and municipal administrators who are either elected or appointed. Their purpose is to maintain the city and manage its services on behalf of the people. Questions of efficiency arise not so much or because those who were directly elected or appointed but for those who comprise the support staff for the city. How many people are necessary to provide payroll services? How many budget analysts or human resource representatives are necessary? Should everyone have an administrative assistant?
Administrative overhead is something that evolves from the other three categories. Many administrative functions are scalable and will increase as services are expanded. Efficiencies can be gained through automation, reserving personalized customer care for services that require direct interfacing with citizens. Efficiencies can also be realized through outsourcing. These and other solutions are explored in other sections of this book.
Corruption within the cityâs administration can sabotage even the best services. Corruption breeds when the citizenry is disengaged from or disinterested in the daily activities of city administrators. Enticing and retaining activist citizens is perhaps the only long-term defense against administrative corruption.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is a defining element of a city. Without roads, water, power or sanitation, a city cannot exist. The infrastructure can be seen as the cityâs core asset, much as a house is a core asset for a family or a shop is a core asset of a business. Businesses cannot transport goods and services, workers cannot get to work and consumers cannot purchase items if roads, bridges, and public transportation are inadequate. People will not live in places with unsafe water, soil, or air or with dangerous feral animals lurking about. Home buyers will not purchase crumbling houses and businesses will not operate from poorly constructed buildings. When a city reaches a certain size, citizens can no longer safely burn or bury their own trash, keep their own septic systems in their back yards, or pump their own drinking water from whatever wells, rivers or lakes may be nearby without jeopardizing the health and safety of their families and neighbors. Ultimately, it is not only safer but more cost effective for citizens to pool their financial resources and share water, sewerage, trash, and other such services and agree upon basic building standards.
Some people believe privatizing can save money. However, privatizing a public infrastructure service means that citizens can no longer easily hold accountable those who run those services or receive transparent reports of the providersâ activities. In some cases, citizens experience significant increases in fees soon after relinquishing their city services to private firms. This is what occurred in Blue Mound, Texas when Monarch Utilities, a private corporation owned by SouthWest Water Company, assumed management of the townâs water. A typical monthly water bill in Blue Mound might cost $140, while in nearby Fort Worth, a similar water bill might be $50 per month. The company stated that deep rate increases were necessary to maintain and improve water and sewer systems (Permenter, 2013).
Cities do not exist without a means to transport people and materials. However, roads are not the only means of transportation. When there is no longer any available land to expand roads, commuter trains can lessen rush hour traffic and free up highways for miscellaneous commuting and the transportation of goods. In some communities, like Dallas, commuter trains are supplemental to roads, which are the primary means of transportation. In other communities, like Boston, commuter trains and buses are critical for the transportation of people. Some communities in the Rocky Mountains or in Alaska would not exist without the small airports that enable people and goods to travel to nearby cities. The same holds true for ferries in New York City, various towns in Michigan, and Marthaâs Vineyard or for boats in Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands. Municipal leadership must identify the core mode of transportation for the city, prioritize its maintenance, and use other modes of transportation to support or supplement the core mode. They must find ways to view various transportation modes as complementary to each other, not competitive. Traffic reports, accident reports, and public works work orders can help identify heaviest usage and determine how to maximize efficiency of existing modes of transportation or find ways to redevelop so that the traffic is spread around to other parts of the city. If all businesses or all restaurants are located on one street or one area, encourage three or four other hubs to spread traffic around and improve convenience to other neighborhoods or sections of town.
Ultimately, infrastructure is meant to bolster economic activity and improve quality of life. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure that improvements are undertaken, not as an end to themselves or because outside grant money is available, but because the city legitimately needs the improvement. Also bear in mind that widening and straightening roads outside heavily trafficked areas can be detrimental to neighborhoods. There are numerous planning books that advocate expanding water and sewer lines, widening and straightening roads, and increasing infrastructure efficiencies. However, these books do not take into account the needs and wishes of the citizens. If the citizens are not clamoring for their neighborhood roads to be widened and straightened, then why do it? Adjusting roads will promote more and faster traffic among homes and schools, thus increasing the danger to pedestrians (particularly children) and bicyclists. Expanding the overall infrastructure of a city, even if initially done with outside grant money, will leave a legacy of infrastructure bloat that will be costly for the citizens to maintain and ultimately replace when the infrastructure becomes outdated (Gallagher, 2013).
The total cost of an improvement project is not the initial contract; it is also the cost of maintenance for years into the future. This in turn will require higher taxes or the assumption of municipal debt (Gallagher, 2013). Many cities are now ageing into their bloated infrastructures and are finding that they struggle to keep up with maintenance and replacement. In July 2014, a 90-year-old water main in Los Angeles ruptured, sending millions of gallons of water into the streets. The torrent damaged facilities at nearby University of California, Los Angeles and wasted potable water during a severe drought (Owens, Queally and Reyes, 2014). Stories like the Los Angeles water main break will become more commonplace as cities struggle to repair an infrastructure that was too big and too expensive in the first place.
Security
All efforts to build and maintain a cityâs infrastructure will be wasted if those assets are damaged or destroyed. Attempts to draw in new citizens and to retain existing citizens will fail if people do not feel safe. Therefore, security should take secondary priority just behind infrastructure and well above other city services. A beautiful park will quickly become a platform for crime without a police force to patrol it. People will not purchase homes that were not built to a standard of safety and quality nor move into a neighborhood overrun with feral animals and polluted with toxic waste or trash. Insurance companies do not want to cover homes and businesses in areas without proper fire protection. Recalling Abraham Maslowâs hierarchy of needs, after basic demands like food and water are obtained, the next primary need is for security of self, of oneâs belongings, and of oneâs family. People cannot progress forward and attain feelings of belonging, of achievement, or of self-actualization as long as security is not addressed. In short, it does not benefit a city to build a convention center if the crime rate remains high.
In the intersection between infrastructure maintenance and city security, some police departments in large cities have initiated programs that incorporate working streets lights, graffiti and trash removal, and property standard enforcement to reduce crime, particularly in areas where crime is already rampant. Called the âbroken window theoryâ, this criminological theory states that removing the signaling effect of urban disorder and vandalism may deter more serious criminal activity (Kelling and Coles, 1998). It will also send a signal to newcomers that the city is safe and orderly, which may encourage them to live there and to relocate their businesses there. Social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling first introduced the broken windows theory in an article titled Broken Windows, in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The title comes from the following examples: âConsider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if itâs unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a pavement. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of refuse from take-out restaurants there or even break into carsâ (Kelling and Coles, 1998). By working in tandem with sanitation, property standards, and building inspectors, security personnel can send a signal to citizens, businesses and criminals that laws and standards can and will be enforced in this city and that the people who live and work here will be safe.
In real estate, broken windows and other forms of vandalism or decay can count as an indicator of low real estate value, and may deter investors. Fixing these problems is therefore a step in real estate development and urban renewal. By reducing the number of vandalized or decayed properties in the community, the inner cities can become more attractive to consumers with capital. Ridding public spaces of danger (signaled and real) would draw in investment from consumers, increasing the cityâs economic status, providing a safe and pleasant image for present and future inhabitants.
Recently, the broken windows theor...
