Response

Discussion 1

The terms strong mayor and weak mayor refer to different systems of city government. Which of these systems reflects how your local city government is run? Which form do you think is better overall? Why?

Discussion 2

National events often affect state and local governments, especially in budgeting. How have national events affected your local government? Have your local officials handled these challenges well or poorly? Why do you think so?

Discussion 3

RESPOND TO ASHLEY POST

My local government is closest to a weak-mayor-council in that our mayor is elected separately from the city council but will still assist; however, decisions are ultimately made by the city council. It’s very much a council-manager form where the city council sits down and discusses issues and comes up with a solutions whether passing ordinances or selecting government heads. I think that depending on the size of the government, a strong mayor structure would work best for bigger cities, whereas smaller cities would probably benefit more from a weak mayor structure. Smaller cities may be easiest to reach your audience (city members and votes) because of the close-knit community. When you care for bigger populations and are responsible for so much more, having an executive head, such as the mayor, might make it easier to put that responsibility on to make final decisions (almost like a governor).

Discussion 4

Respond to Ashley post

I’ve seen a couple of responses with increase activity in law enforcement but it’s not the same where I’m from. I wish my local government actually supported our law enforcement and other first responders but that’s an ongoing issue that we’ve been fighting. There have been some changes, specifically when it comes to environmental issues. For a while, our immediate area saw an increase in earthquakes that cause severe damage throughout our city and other nearby cities. Because of this, we have a better and more improved emergency response system in place should we ever encounter a major issue such as this. We perform monthly roll calls for those agencies that a part of the emergences response system to ensure everyone is monitoring radios and other communication devices they are responsible for. With this, an increase in new policies have been put out city wide for all departments including law enforcement, fire departments, parks & recreation, and other city entities.

Discussion 5

Respond to Thomas post

In the case of the local government wanting to continue having funding so they will not go against state regulations so they dont push for things that they want for the revenue and to have in their area but dont want to loose funding so they find ways to go about circumventing the system and still getting what they want. The other issue with some of these things is why does the state not look into some of these things and make sure that things are on the up and up in counties and not just in the bigger cities. Here in West Virginia we have like 5 bigger cities that you can drive through with stop lights and everything else is so small most towns dont have stop lights and are so out of the way that no one goes there for anything. But they can have whatever they want in that town.