Government in the Twilight Zone

Volunteers to Small-City Boards and Commissions

John R. Baker

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781438456300, 9781438456317
• eBook ISBN: 9781438456324
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

While 97 percent of all American cities are smaller than 50, 000 and millions of Americans experience civic life in these communities, what we know about their politics and governance is limited, particularly how local board systems operate, who the board members are, what motivates them to serve, and what they think about their experiences. Drawing on a unique and extensive set of survey data from board members, mayors, and city councilors in sixty cities across six states, Government in the Twilight Zone significantly expands our knowledge of small city boards and politics. By embedding the empirical research in the historical trajectory of small towns, John R. Baker provides a rich narrative that discusses the role of entities such as planning commissions, parks and recreation boards, and zoning appeals boards. He also clarifies how board and commission members are recruited in small cities, explains how these organizations work to make the decisions required of them, and reveals what they and their city councilors and mayors think about their importance and effectiveness.

CHAPTER 1

“We’re Not Dead Yet”—Small Cities Become Big(ger) Players?

Our community has experienced rapid commercial and residential development in the last 10 years. More turmoil over the services the city should provide & how to pay for them [has emerged]. We’ve also had to develop and enforce new ordinances, i.e., a landscaping ordinance.

—Baxter, Minnesota Parks and Recreation Board member, 2000

[The] town is only 11 years old. At first the smaller population was homogeneous. Growth issues are now more prevalent.

—Queen Creek, Arizona Planning Commission member, 2001

A central premise of this book is that we need to know more about how small cities are governed. Much of the urban politics research focuses on large metropolitan areas, and the core cities of those metro areas, whereas small cities are rarely studied. When they are, scholars tend to rely on case studies to try to draw broader conclusions. Implicit in this call for more research on small cities is the notion that these places are important for us to understand because they play a significant role in the overall American democratic political landscape. Although certainly this view can be seen as (and is) normative, clear empirical evidence exists to support the significant role that small cities play in the way millions of Americans experience political and community life on a day-to-day basis. Thus before embarking on the effort to understand more clearly how small cities are governed by exploring their board systems, this chapter analyzes and discusses important historical and demographic trends affecting small cities in recent years. In this way, the research presented later can be viewed in light of a larger framework and context regarding the nature of small cities.

Perhaps the best starting point in this regard is simply to note that in spite of what could be called the myth of the sleepy small town and the oft-suggested narrative that small towns are dying, or are dead (e.g., Wheeler, 1964; Davies, 1998), small cities are, for the most part, neither sleepy nor dead. It is true that some are very quiet and appear to be sleepy, and some have died, or seem to be dying, but this gross generalization is not accurate for the vast majority of small cities in the country. In fact, not only are most small cities not dead, many of them are experiencing rapid population growth and all the attendant service delivery and public policy challenges that come along with such growth. It seems that small is big these days, at least when it comes to the question of what demographic and economic forces are shaping the nature of American society in the early years of the 21st century. Even a cursory search of the recent literature on small towns results in several articles and books sounding a similar chorus of how population shifts and economic trends over the last couple of decades have reshaped many smaller communities across the country, including some that have practically come back from the dead (e.g., Nasser, 2004; Schultz, 2004; Johnson, 2006; Halebsky, 2009; Connolly, 2010; Macgregor, 2010; Wuthnow, 2011; Williams, 2011; Greenfield, 2012; Kotkin, 2012). For much of the 20th century, certainly the first 70 years, migration patterns were fundamentally rural to urban. Though the volume waxed and waned each decade, the trend was clear. More Americans fled rural small towns and cities for the larger metropolises than vice versa. This pattern subsided by 1970, picked up again in the 1980s, but once again waned in the 1990s and 2000s (Johnson, 2006, 1). In short, the last 2 decades have seen a “rural rebound” (Johnson & Beale, 1995), and according to demographer Wendell Cox “… urban areas with fewer than 1 million people expanded by 15%, compared to barely 9% for larger urban areas” (quoted in Kotkin, 2012, 2).

To be clear, America is still an urban nation. According to the 2010 census, 81% of Americans live in urban areas; this is up from 79% in 2000 (Berg, 2012). What is noteworthy, however, is that the nature of urban America is being altered. The Census Bureau officially lists two types of urban areas. An “urbanized area” is defined as 50,000 people or more, whereas an “urban cluster” is an area between 2,500 and 50,000. The population is split roughly 70–30 between urbanized areas and urban clusters. However, what is worth noting here is that of the roughly 3,500 urban areas in the United States, the vast majority of them are urban clusters—smaller in size (containing approximately 10% of the total U.S. population) but larger in number compared to urbanized areas (Berg, 2012, 1). This trend is so significant that a new label, “micropolitan statistical area,” has been created by the government to more precisely delineate these fast-growing urban areas. A good example of this new type of small city is Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Just 2 or 3 decades ago, Roanoke Rapids was no more than a spot on the map along Route I-95 serving essentially as a travel pit-stop for vacationers heading from the Northeast to southeastern beaches. Once a sleepy little mill town, as the national economy transitioned from industrial to service based, Roanoke Rapids was transformed into an economic hub of activity and now serves as the anchor community for over 76,000 people who live in and around the town (Nasser, 2004, 1). Indeed, Forbes magazine has reported that of the 30 urban regions adding jobs at the fastest rate in 2012, 27 of them were in smaller and midsized metro areas, including fairly small areas such as Columbus, Indiana; Williamsport, Pennsylvania; Holland–Grand Haven, Michigan; and Casper, Wyoming (Kotkin, 2012, 2).

The significance of this large-city to small-city demographic shift that seemed to pick up speed in the 1990s was highlighted in Beyond the Metropolis: Urban Geography as if Small Cities Mattered (Ofori-Amoah, 2007). As Ofori-Amoah notes, our American urban system is characterized by a collection of cities of many different sizes and functions, yet the vast majority of urban studies research is focused on the extremes of very large cities and very small, rural outposts. Not enough research has been dedicated to those cities that lie between the extremes (2007, 3–4). Like this book, Ofori-Amoah’s volume takes a stab at filling that gap; Brennan and Hoene contribute a chapter that focuses on the just-mentioned demographic shifts occurring in small cities during the 1990s. To begin they make the salient point that the overwhelming majority (97%) of American cities have fewer than 50,000 residents, and if the population threshold is dropped to only 10,000, the percentage of all American cities that fall into this category is still very large, at 87% (Brennan & Hoene, 2007, 69). Regarding the six states discussed in this book, the numbers are strikingly similar, as 87–99% of all incorporated cities across the six states have populations below 50,000. Specifically, as of the 2000 Census, this included 76 of 87 (87%) total cities in Arizona, 491 of 497 (99%) total cities in Arkansas, 21 of 22 (95%) total cities in Maine, 850 of 864 (98%) total cities in Minnesota, 924 of 942 (98%) total cities in Ohio, and 265 of 268 (99%) total cities in South Carolina. Moreover, of those citizens living in incorporated communities across these six states, the percentage in each state living in cities with populations under 50,000 ranged from 14.3% in Arizona to 50.1% in Minnesota.

Yet, despite these statistics showing clearly that of cities nationwide smaller cities are much more representative than larger cities, Brennan and Hoene reiterate Ofori-Amoah’s point that researchers focus the vast majority of their attention on very large cities. To help correct this imbalance, they focus on the demographic changes in small cities—using the National League of Cities’ definition of “small cities” as incorporated places with populations under 50,000 (the same definition used in this book). Relying on the 2002 Census of Governments, a study conducted by the Census Bureau every 5 years, Brennan and Hoene report that during the 1990s a greater percentage of small cities experienced population growth than did medium-sized (50,000–100,000) and large cities (greater than 100,000). Specifically, 892 cities experienced double-digit growth during the 1990s, and 77.5% were small cities, 14.3% were medium-sized cities, and 8.2% were large cities (2007, 72).

For their in-depth analysis, Brennan and Hoene selected a random sample of 100 small cities and then separated them according to population size. Small cities were those with populations under 10,000, medium-sized cities were those between 10,000 and 25,000, and large cities were those between 25,000 and 50,000. One significant trend was that smaller cities experienced greater population growth rates during the decade. The smaller units saw overall increases of 18.5% compared to 12.9% for medium-sized cities and 9.1% for large cities (2007, 78).

Perhaps more telling of the growth trends, though, is when the authors divide the sample of different sized cities into five categories based on their rates of growth. They defined rapid-growth cities as those with growth rates greater than 20%. Strong-growth cities experienced growth of 10–20%. Moderate-growth cities saw 2–10% growth, and no-growth cities saw –2–2% growth. Declining cities saw population declines of more than 2%. Table 1.1 displays the results of this analysis; as can be seen, 47% of small cities experienced rapid or strong growth rates, compared to 51% of the medium-sized cities and 41% of the large cities. Moreover, the larger small cities were more likely to have experienced declines in population (Brennan & Hoene 2007, 78–79).

How did the cities compare across regions? Using the Census Bureau’s regional categories of Northeast, South, Midwest, and West, the authors compared growth rates of the small cities across these four regions, and also to the overall growth rates in each region. Small cities in the Midwest and West experienced the fastest growth rates (34% and 32%, respectively) compared to the southern small cities (13%), whereas small cities in the Northeast experienced an overall negative growth rate of 3% (2007, 80). When these growth rates are compared to the overall growth rates for each region, the Western and Midwestern small cities outpaced the growth rates of all cities in their regions. In the Midwest, the overall growth rate (for all cities) was 8%, 26% lower than for the small cities in the Midwest. For the West, the rate for all cities was 20%, 12% lower than the small-city rate. In the South, the overall rate of 17% was slightly higher than that of the small cities, but in the Northeast, the overall growth rate was 6%, even though the small cities in that region experienced a declining rate (Brennan & Hoene, 2007, 80).

Table 1.1. Population Growth of Small U.S. Cities during the 1990s

	Percentage of Small Cities (n = 39)	Percentage of Moderate Cities (n = 36)	Percentage of Large Cities (n = 25)
Rapid growth (> 20%)	36	28	18
Strong growth (10–20%)	11	23	23
Moderate growth (2–10%)	22	24	33
No growth (-2–2%)	15	13	6
Declining cities (< -2%)	16	12	20

Source: Brennan and Hoene, 2007, 79

Interesting differences also emerge when small cities near metro areas are compared to ones in nonmetro areas. As shown in Table 1.2, being part of a metro area was a key factor contributing to rapid growth for small cities during the 1990s, but 63% of cities experiencing decline were also part of metro areas ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Government in the Twilight Zone: Volunteers to Small-City Boards and Commissions
• Chapter 1 “We’re Not Dead Yet”—Small Cities Become Big(ger) Players?
• Chapter 2 The Taxonomy of Local Boards and Commissions in Small Cities
• Chapter 3 The Ties that Bond and Bridge: Small-Town Board Members as Social Capitalists
• Chapter 4 Incentive Theory and Voluntarism: Motivations for Board Service
• Chapter 5 Explaining Recruitment Patterns of Board Members
• Chapter 6 Inside the Twilight Zone: Board Operations and Members’ Experiences
• Chapter 7 The View From the Top: City Councilors and Mayors Assess Their City’s Boards and Commissions
• Chapter 8 Exiting the Twilight Zone
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Back Cover