A Taste of Traveling

City Government Part 1

chuck's comment on the previous post got me to thinking about forms of city government. I have lived in cities with all sorts of forms of governments--New York, little bitty Vermont town (so small that if I named it, I might blow my cover), Lower Merion Township (a suburb of Philadelphia), Burlington, VT, and Kansas City, MO.

Once people begin to live together in close proximity with each other, they found they had to organize so that people would do things for the group welfare in an organized manner. Things like getting the garbage picked up and the streets plowed. In small towns, the authority rests with the Town Meeting. Held once a year on the first Tuesday in March, the meeting elects selectmen to represent the town and make decisions the rest of the year. Town meeting also attends to money issues like budget and taxes.

Usually a small Vermont town will only have a few paid employees. The Town Clerk keeps track of voting, meetings, permits and all the paperwork. The Road Commissioner will keep the roads in good shape. (Advice: Make friends with the Road Commissioner...)

Now, as towns get bigger, that direct democracy thing stops working so well. It's hard to have a big town meeting when you have a lot of residents. The "select board" becomes the "board of aldermen" or "the city council" and is elected by ballot by residents organized into districts or wards. The job of the day to day running of the municipality gets big. The elected representatives need help. Many cities then create the position of Town/City Manager. That person, hired by the City Council, is the COO of the town. This the structure of Lower Merion Township--they call the offices Board of Commissioners and Township Manager. They have no mayor in their town. A larger town in Vermont near my itty bitty town also has this form: no mayor, just an elected board and a manager.

And it is the form of government of Kansas City, Missouri. Except Kansas City has a mayor.

I really thought that Burlington, VT had a city manager but no. The town that gave the world Bernie Sanders has a "strong mayor" form of government. There is no manager, but the mayor's office is over a Board of Commissioners and city offices. Oh, the city council has to vote on stuff. But most things originate in the mayor's office.

Chicago may be the granddaddy of all cities run out of the mayor's office but I have lived in New York City and it too is run by a strong mayor. As you can see I had a little fun with Microsoft Paint demonstrating the difference between a strong mayor form of government and a city manager form of government in which, really, the mayor is optional.

In New York, you have the mayor, with seven deputy mayors and a 51 member city council. They are helped by the Comptroller who functions as a CFO. The five borough presidents are all probably overpaid for the work they do. They are probably an accident of history that has been hard to remove all these years.

Kansas City used to have a strong mayor form too, but the city became very corrupt. A reform movement created the City Manager's office. The mayor is very weak, having become one of thirteen voices in city council meetings. In a way, the mayor in KCMO is a bit of a vestige, like the NYC borough presidents.

Each form of government has its strengths and weaknesses. I'll explore those in a future post, especially relative to Mark Funkhouser, the current mayor of Kansas City, MO.

Click on my silly pictures to make them bigger. Use the back button to return.

Links:

Organizational charts of New York, NY and Burlington, VT. Descriptions of Lower Merion Township, PA and Kansas City, MO. Town Meeting Day is from personal experience, right down to Mr. "Point of order."

(Sorry, no link to Kansas City--at 1613, the site seems to be down...500...server problem.)

History Of Emergency Medical Services

I debated posting this video for a little while as it is kind of long and "teachy", but it sent me right down memory lane, as well as addressing some here and now issues near the end. It gave me some historical perspective on something I ended up doing and loving, almost by a happenstance. So I want to share it with you.



Yes, we've visited the history of EMS before. I gave you a link to the report on accidental death and disability, and I introduced you to Freedom House. We'll link up to those posts here so you can go to them easily.

In this video there is a reference to the Hyatt Regency sky walk disaster here in Kansas City, MO. That event, in 1981, taxed the then rather haphazard EMS system of this city to the max. It was that memory that stood behind the eventual formation of the Metropolitan Ambulance Services Trust, MAST. MAST, along with Johnson County Med-Act on the Kansas side, eventually provided some of the best, most cutting edge EMS in the country, with cardiac arrest save rates and response times in the top 10 of the nation. Now we are coming full circle, barring further political maneuvers, MAST will cease to exist and the EMS service will be merged into the Kansas City Fire Department.

I became involved in EMS in 1976 in Vermont. Back then, we made our own backboards, out of sturdy wood, stain/paint and finish. I was trained in CPR with some of the newest standards. We had a proper federally funded Type I ambulance. That service, which was established in 1968, still exists today, with dedicated volunteers, and provides ambulance service for at least four towns. Vermont now has state wide 911 service, and considerable effort was made to give every occupied dwelling a street or house number. Many of the towns have established FAST squads, or organized their fire department to go to scenes quickly, and provide care before the ambulance gets there. This service has provided care to two of my relatives, and I am proud to have been a part of this organization. We were part of the vanguard. While in college in PA, I worked BLS level transport ambulance, and later became a part of a volunteer unit trying to revolutionize the EMS care in our Main Line suburban township. I also was a CPR instructor. While I was there, our unit transitioned to a ALS or advanced life support unit. When I left, the service was still trying to convince the police department that we were a far better choice then the back of a paddy wagon.

Now, I am an RN, who finds the ER to be my favorite type of nursing. One of the gaps in the video, besides its lack of recognition for Freedom House, is its neglect to mention the Emergency Nurses Association. ER nurses are a special breed!

Looking at this video, and looking back, I am both amazed and gratified to have played a small part in encouraging and being involved in the development of prehospital care and treatment of the sick and injured in this country.

Let's Face It, Blowing Stuff Up Is Fun

The Crown Point Bridge over Lake Champlain between New York and Vermont had deteriorated to the point that it could not be repaired without spending extraordinary amounts of money. In order to make room for a new bridge, the old one had to be demolished. (Kansas City residents will note that the bridge bears a resemblance to the old Chouteau Bridge, which met a similar fate in 2001.) Herewith some video:

Best comment from the Burlington Free Press website: "Where's the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth shattering Kaboom."

A Good News Story

Here is a genuine good news story...okay, all you cynics out there just sit down.

An organization in Vermont that rehabs cars and gives them to people who need them got a wonderful windfall courtesy of a law suit settlement. Check out the links:

Good News Garage Lands $100,000 in Settlement--Burlington Free Press

Good News Garage Scores $100K Gift--WCAX

Pretty cool stuff.

Best License Plate in the Union

I've lived in the Kansas City area since 1989, and no car I've owned since 1994 has had one, but I still feel that Vermont license plates are the best in the nation. Bright, simple and distinctive, (they are the only plates where the numbers and letters are imprinted, rather then raised), I just love seeing them.

P.S. There is no ridiculous personal property tax on cars in Vermont.

Driving School for Everyone!

Just to prove that all the bad drivers do not live in Kansas City...

From WPTZ channel 5 in Burlington, VT:

3 Drivers From 1 Family Involved In 4-Car Crash
Wife Rear-Ends Husband; Son, Trying To Avoid Crash, Hits Jeep
POSTED: 4:46 pm EDT September 6, 2009UPDATED: 4:54 pm EDT September 6, 2009

CONCORD, Vt. -- Vermont State Police said only minor injuries were reported when three drivers from one family were involved in a four-car accident.
Randy Fecteau, 38, of Hardwick, was rear-ended by his 34-year-old wife, Patty, as they drove east on U.S. Route 2 in North Concord on Saturday. Their 16-year-old son, Andrew, driving in another car saw the crash, tried evasive maneuvers and hit a Jeep in the oncoming lane.
Neither the driver of the Jeep -- Rosanne Horsler, 31, of Lunenberg -- nor any of the other passengers in the vehicles were hurt seriously.
Horsler's Jeep, Patty Fecteau's Chevrolet Cavalier and the Nissan Maxima being driven by Andrew Fecteau were all totaled.
Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I cannot possibly add another word...