A COMPARISON OF FINANCIAL CONDITIONS OF THE CITIES OF BRANCH AND NORTH BRANCH, MINNESOTA FOR YEARS 1986-1991

The objective of this brief background paper is to compare selected financial indicators for the cities of Branch and North Branch for the years 1986-1991. For an additional reference point in the comparison, we compared the two cities to the average of Greater Minnesota cities their size (fewer than 2,500 people).Community/Rural/Urban Development,

AN OVERVIEW OF FACTORS AFFECTING THE SIZE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This paper reviews many factors affecting the size of local government. These factors include: current demographic trends and changes in alternative service delivery arrangements, theoretical schools of thought, evidence on economies of size, whether current local governments are managed efficiently, and legal and political factors.Public Economics,

What Determines the Formal Versus Relational Nature of Local Government Contracting?

Meeyoung Lamothe is currently an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include local alternative service delivery arrangements, social service contracting, and nonprofit management. Her recent publications may be found in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, International Journal of Public Administration, and American Review of Public Administration.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Rural Development Policy in the United States: Beyond the Cargo Cult Mentality

A host of economic, institutional, and political forces have thwarted the development of an appropriate comprehensive federal rural development policy in the U. S. This article examines those influences from an historical perspective. Some of the changes noted are the emergence of rural development leadership in agencies other than the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the birth of a new Congressional Rural Caucus, the formation of a National Rural Network of rural advocacy groups, and the coming realization that the destinies of central cities and rural areas are intertwined. An encouraging sign is the move toward a different type of rural policy governance in Washington, one in which a sensitivity to rural contexts and issues is being articulated in Transportation, Health and Human Services, and other program units that are not expressly rural-oriented. At the same time there continues to be too much emphasis placed on agriculture’s role in the rural economy, which leads to policies that cannot help most rural communities

Capacity-Building (Management Improvement) for Local Governments: An Annotated Bibliography

This bibliography of publications from 1964 through 1980 presents 162 annotated references on capacity-building for local governments. Capacity-building is improving the ability of local communities and areas to manage their problems. Each citation summarizes the publication's contribution, gives an explicit and an implicit definition of the terms, "capacity" and "capacity-building," and determines the type of capacity to which the publication refers

Cooperation: A Help in Providing Community Services

If a community is unable to perform a needed public service by itself, it should explore the possibility of cooperating with other communities to provide that service. Small communities often do not have the money, personnel, or equipment to provide all needed public services on their own. Even if they can perform the function, they can often save considerable money and effort by cooperating with neighboring communities in providing some services. Cooperation can alleviate duplication, overlap, and fragmentation in the delivery of community services. It can lower costs to the individual communities in the process

Theoretical and Practical Issues of Local Government Capacity in an Era of Devolution

The United States is in the midst of massive devolution or decentralization of domestic programs in health care, welfare, and other functions. With devolution come greatly increased responsibilities for local governments. As local governments are assuming more responsibility for policymaking, management, and implementation of important national goals, it is important to consider their capacity or ability to take on these added responsibilities. This article asks critical questions, poses problems entailed in measuring capacity, challenges the question of whether local governments have the necessary capacity to undertake new demands being placed on them, and discusses the special capacity-building needs of local governments. It may be more important for local governments to be able to obtain additional capacity to meet new challenges than for them to have the capacity in order to be ready to receive the new challenges. In a sense, it is irrelevant whether they have the capacity because the federal government with considerable public support has decided that local governments will take on more responsibility for domestic programs. The question, then, is what can be done to help them perform their expanded roles as well as possible. Information sharing, networking, removing barriers to local flexibility and creativity, and technical assistance are some of the opportunities higher-level governments and other technical assistance providers, such as universities, have for increasing the capacity of local governments