Free Speech, Opinion and the Truth

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...

Build a Community, Not Just an Economy

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...

Building a Team – For Success

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...

Cooperation, Regionalization, and Amalgamation

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...

The Politics of Civic Engagement

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...