Known for encouraging step-by-step problem solving and for connecting techniques to real-world scenarios, David Ammons’ Tools for Decision Making covers a wide range of local government practices—from the foundational to the advanced. Brief and readable, each chapter opens with a problem in a hypothetical city and then introduces a tool to address it. Thoroughly updated with new local government examples, the second edition also incorporates chapters devoted to such additional techniques as sampling analysis, sensitivity analysis, financial condition analysis, and forecasting via trend analysis. Numerous tables, figures, exhibits, equations, and worksheets walk readers through the application of tools, and boxed features throughout each chapter present other uses for techniques, helpful online resources, and common errors. A handy guide for students and an invaluable resource and reference for practitioners.
There are ghosts in the mountains, there are whispers in the wind. Voices from the river are carried through the trees, an invitation to journey through waters and woods and etched canyons to connect to purpose and truth and meaning.Sermons in Stones is a collection of eighteen beautifully-crafted short stories, anecdotes, and personal narratives offering thoughtful and profound reflection on the author's life experiences in a "mountain wilderness carved by a river". This memoir-of-sorts is a celebration of family, friends, and fly fishing from a man who is torn between the trials of the modern world and the simpler, serene ways of nature. With a poetic voice and pensive mood that invites the reader to step right into the scene, these essays reflect the same tranquility as one would find high in the Colorado mountains.
Ammons (public administration, U. of North Carolina) put together this guide to benchmarks for mayors, city council members, city managers, department heads, management analysts, and citizens who want a measuring rod for local government services. He includes national standards, engineered standar
Completely updated with new listings and statistics throughout, this comprehensive resource goes beyond the current literature on local government performance measurement and provides benchmarks on more than 40 key topics against which performance can be assessed in all areas of operation. "Ammons has assembled a remarkable volume of benchmark data for a comprehensive range of municipal government services. Municipal Benchmarks will be of considerable help for municipalities in laying the groundwork for an accountable government." - Harry Hatry, The Urban Institute "I am delighted to see that ideas for advancing our industry are alive and thriving. Ammons's collection does an incredible service to every municipal manager in the country, and perhaps the world. These benchmarks clearly set standardized ways of looking at measuring the performance of municipal service delivery." - Ted Gaebler, City Manager, Rancho Cordoba, CA (co-author of Reinventing Government)
Washington State is a place of political mavericks. Split tickets are a source of pride and independent voters outnumber Democrats and Republicans. Washington was first to have a voter-approved state Equal Rights Amendment, first to elect a woman as governor, and first to elect a Chinese-American to the position. Today, Washington’s open primary election system and voter registration process demonstrate it has not drifted far from its populist roots. Governing the Evergreen State provides an absorbing look at an ever-evolving state political and judicial system and presents intriguing case studies. With chapters on interest groups, the constitution, the environment, media coverage, the court system, the legislature, political parties, changing demographics, and more, this volume updates the popular Governing Washington. Fresh discussions and analysis written by academics from universities across the state, a senator, a pollster, a newspaper reporter/blogger, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and a court administrator offer a springboard for further examination and discussion.
This book guides readers to the mastery of a wide array of practical analytic techniques useful to local governments. Written in an easy-to-read style with an emphasis on providing practical assistance to students, local government practitioners, and others interested in local government performance, this updated third edition features analytic methods selected for their relevance to everyday problems encountered in city and county governments. The authors outline a variety of practical techniques including the simplest that the fields of management, public administration, policy analysis, and industrial engineering have to offer. Each analytic technique is introduced in the context of a fictitious case presented over a few pages at the beginning of that technique’s chapter. Contents include demand analysis, work distribution analysis, process flow-charting, inflation adjustments, annualizing capital costs, staffing analysis, identifying full costs of a program or service, present value analysis, life-cycle costing, lease/buy analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, benchmarking analysis, and more. This updated third edition features a dramatic expansion of Excel-based applications, plus templates and exercises accompanying many of the chapters and available online. New chapters prepare readers to: • use statistical tests to identify significant differences in performance averages; • construct Pareto charts; • develop cause-and-effect diagrams; • prepare control charts; • detect possible discrimination in hiring and appointment practices; and • present analytic evidence more effectively. This book is an essential resource for students and instructors of public administration courses on analysis, methods, evaluation, productivity improvement, and service delivery. Online resources for this book, including Excel templates, are available at https://toolsfordecisionmaking.sog.unc.edu
This study explores the work life of mayors, city managers, and other top executives in city government. Based on a survey of 527 city executives and enlivened with numerous anecdotes, the book documents time allocation patterns and work routines. City Executives makes comparisons with previous studies to show how city executives compare with managers in other types of organizations. The authors also note how city managers' role has changed over a 20-year period. City executives are shown to be like their private-sector counterparts. For example, they function at a relentless pace, are frequently interrupted in their work, and are generally overburdened. However, because city workers operate in an environment open to public scrutiny, they are left with only a minority of their professional time to attend to matters that they describe as priorities. Instead, they must constantly respond to intergovernmental demands, emergencies, and the needs of citizens and legislative officials.
Whit Nelson, a former Vietnam helicopter pilot, and PTSD survivor is enjoying his new house in the wilds of Bucks County, PA. Big Davey McBride, his wife's father, and head of an international law firm, where she is a partner, proposes that Whit and Scotty take a working vacation to the south of France. Thus begins a nightmare journey that nearly destroys them both as they are confronted with the beginnings of the modern terrorist era in the person of Sanjak al-Rahman, an international playboy, and financier to many terrorist groups. He forces them to grapple with many demons from their past, even as they, inadvertently, peel away the layers of his lurid and savage life.
Approving or denying building permits and other land-use applications is an important role of local governments but one that often draws criticism from developers and citizens alike. This volume identifies an array of proven practices for bringing greater fairness, thoroughness, and speed to the development review process. The authors and a team of planning and development review professionals benchmarked with three national leaders and discovered seventy-eight distinctive practices accounting for the leaders' success. In doing so, the benchmarking team not only produced helpful advice for improving development review processes but also demonstrated the value to local governments of a type of benchmarking fairly common in the private sector but rarely used in the public sector.
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