The shakeup we are seeing in the retail sector might be painful for some but it is inevitable and ultimately will be good for everyone, particularly consumers. For business owners, it offers a simple choice: Adapt or die. For a bit of perspective - here is a short...

I hear this phrase a lot: “Well, that’s my opinion.” When that phrase is uttered, it is rarely about harmless things, like whether the eggs we had for breakfast were good. It doesn’t need to be said that how your eggs are done, as with many other things, is a matter...

I have travelled all across this great country of ours, from community to community, and one thing has always stood out . . . everyone wants economic success. Why wouldn’t they?  Economic success helps our communities grow and become stronger.  The challenge...

This issue of Municipal World has a focus on human resources. I thought long and hard about what I could write. Everyone in this issue is surely more expert than I, on hiring the right type of people and managing them in a way that makes them happy and productive, so...

Across the county, municipalities are at different stages of finding ways to work together. Some municipalities are being asked politely to work together, some are being actively persuaded with the addition or removal of funding from their budgets, and the remainder...

Civic engagement is a subject that is garnering more ink and prose than most other issues in municipal discourse these days.  The term has different connotations depending on the context in which you search.  For the purpose of this column I am going to...

Very few of us realize the significant impact our organization’s culture has on the success or failure of the organization.  We have our protocols, processes, hierarchy, and job descriptions in place and we presume that is all we can do internally to ensure the...