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Resource Library
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Building Successful Advisory Boards (series reprinted from Quality Cities March/April 2004)
A City Case Study: Dunedin
The City of Dunedin, in Pinellas County, has approximately 39 boards and committees, most of which have three-year appointments. They vary in size depending upon their specific task.
Cooperative Achievement - Elected Officials and Advisory Boards Work Together to Strengthen Their Cities
Every local government routinely appoints citizens to serve on these boards – sometimes without fully understanding the value and benefits that can be attained, and the pitfalls that should be avoided.
Ethically Speaking - State Laws Cover Appointed Board Members
I believe it is fair to say that there are more misunderstandings about the applicability of state ethics laws to members of advisory boards than there are with respect to any other category of public servant...It is my hope that the following information will assist appointed board members in becoming familiar with the range and breadth of these laws.
Facilitation:A Key for Successful Advisory Boards and Committees
Boards and committees are formed to perform a task or solve a problem and then are expected to go off and do their work. Unfortunately, like most groups, many meet and continue to meet with limited results.
How To Succeed with Advisory Boards
Municipal advisory boards are made up of dedicated citizens who devote time, energy and expertise to issues or causes that affect their city. However, advisory boards without a clear mission or purpose not only are ineffective, but waste the time of board members, elected officials and city employees.
The Sunshine Law and Advisory Committees
“[T]he Sunshine Law equally binds all members of governmental bodies, be they advisory committee members or elected officials.”
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Alphabetical Quality Cities Article Listing
About the Florida League of Cities
...When created in 1922, the membership vowed to concentrate its influence upon other lawmaking bodies for the purpose of shaping legislation, sharing the advantages of cooperative action, and exchanging ideas and experiences. Today our mission remains the same...
Application Software: Buy It or Build It?
As we travel around the state with our consulting services, often senior-management, elected and appointed officials ask whether they should be purchasing commercial-off-the-shelf software packages or developing them using in-house staff. For the information-systems industry, this has been a point of debate...
Assessing the Effects of Retail-Based Development at the Community Level
Retail-based development is a sometimes-overlooked but vital component of local economies. Certainly, the arguments for supporting retail-based development include the following elements...
Build Community Involvement if You Want to Have a Community
Face it. Your community can’t operate without volunteers. No volunteers means higher costs, lack of services, citizen apathy and disapproval...
Cities Celebrate Their Strengths Through Public Art
Artwork in a public space can highlight unique local history, be a symbol of new directions, or become an important element in transforming blighted areas. Public art programs have blossomed over the past 30 years as more governmental authorities have recognized the value of placing art in their public spaces...
City Inaction, or City in Action?
Cities that have found the right balance between process and product are able to deal with difficult and divisive issues, while those that have not are mired in a never-ending cycle of debate, conflict and inaction...
Creating a Successful City: A New Perspective on "NIMTO"
I first heard the term NIMTO (“Not in my term of office”) in April...It was discussed in terms of avoiding unpleasant decisions (such as raising taxes), but I thought it conveyed the idea of implementing a city vision in a very positive way...
DSL vs. Cable: Cities Face Difficult Choice in Battle of the Broadbands
Trying to determine which high-speed Internet connection is right for your city or organization can be daunting. It seems that everyone has a high-speed (broadband) connection these days...
Eight Tips for More Effective E-Mail Communication
While no one denies the obvious productivity gains we’ve realized from the efficiencies of e-mail communication, many people find themselves drowning in all these messages. Here are eight tips that will make your e-mail communications more effective...
The Evolution of Document Imaging
...From these two seemingly irreconcilable perspectives emerged the modern-day imaging systems. Such systems use technology to blend the durability of archival systems with the power of retrieval systems...
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Getting Started in Community Development Programs
At a recent Community Development Block Grant training session put on by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), more than half of 48 people in attendance had been in the field less than a year...
GIS: Where Are We?
Statistically, we know that about 80 percent of a municipal organization’s functions revolve around its geography. Perhaps one of the most valuable systems to supporting the geographic functions is the Geographic Information System (GIS)...
Going Green: Sustainable Development Is Key to Your City's Future
Lately, you may have heard or read about “sustainable development” and wondered what it is, and if it is an idea that could help your city. The concept of sustainable development incorporates many ideas, from land-use and environmental planning to the building and construction industries...
Grassroots Advocacy Tips for Municipal Officials
Whether your municipality is a city, town or village and the population is 20 or 1 million, Florida’s municipal governments strive each day to deliver their services in an effective manner...
How to Maximize Your City’s Public Relations
City leaders are embracing the notion of public relations as a new approach to maximizing their abilities to reach, communicate with and inform the people who live and work in their communities...
Improve Your City's Efficiency Through Computer Standardization
Standardization is everywhere. Look around in your organization, and you’ll see that everything is standardized at some level. Why should technology be any different?
In Recognition of Citizen Planners: Support Your Local Planning Commission
...I continue to be amazed at the dedication of planning commissioners who willingly contribute their time to help elected officials make better decisions for their cities. While attorneys and other land-use professionals may volunteer to serve, most planning commissioners are true “laymen”...
International Is Back
...an update about what is happening throughout the state with a few of these international programs. It is designed to enable appointed and elected officials to establish relationships with the right people when they need help with international matters...
Is It Time To Update Your City's Development Codes?
...in many cities, the development codes in place are now 20 years old or older. Even cities that adopted codes as part of the process of implementing their comprehensive plans in the early 1990s now have codes close to 15 years old. Since that time, there have been many innovations...
Is Your City Planning on Upgrading to Windows XP?
When was the last time you upgraded your operating system? Are you still running OS/2, DOS, Windows 95 or Windows 98, Second Edition on your desktop PCs? For some, it may be working fine – but eventually, you’ll need to upgrade your desktop operating system or hardware...
Is Your City's Data Safe?
It only takes one catastrophic data loss event in a network administrator’s career to ensure it will never happen again...
It's Personal: The Legitimate Exclusion of E-Mail and Phone Records from Disclosure Under the Public Records Law
For the most part, many officials tend to err on the side of caution, concluding that each item is a public record. This response is indicative of a lingering misconception among many that virtually all information in city hall somehow represents a record that must be offered up for inspection under the public-records law...
It's Time for Budget 101
A budget is the “plan of attack” that sets forth the program priorities and allocation of resources available to accomplish the goals of the municipal government during the upcoming fiscal year...
Keeping Your Computer System Safe Can Be a Real Power Struggle
Whether your facilities are less than one year old or have been around for decades, it’s not a question of if, but when, you will experience weather-related electrical power problems. When it comes to your computer infrastructure, you need to protect these valuable business tools from Mother Nature with Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS)...
Linking Growth with Water Availability
...The issues of water supply and water resources were the province of one linear group who seldom communicated with the other. Intergovernmental coordination at the local, regional and state levels was clearly lacking...
Municipal Incorporation in Florida
Communities considering incorporation usually begin with a group of residents who seek services, or self-governance over certain issues. Contact with their state representative often is the next step, as incorporation requires a special act of the Florida Legislature...
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The Need for a Sophisticated and Globally Engaged Civic Leadership
Maintaining and promoting a healthy economy is part of the job description of every community’s local elected officials. In order to meet this challenge and exercise the leadership role to which they are elected, municipal officials must be engaged at the local, regional and global levels...
No Strings Attached: Wireless Technology Gaining in Popularity
Wireless technology, which allows users to connect to a network or the Internet from a personal digital assistant (PDA) or laptop computer without “plugging in,” is proving it is here to stay. Areas called “hot spots,” where users whose electronic devices have wireless capabilities can catch a wireless signal, are growing across the country and the world...
Off-Site Storage for Vital Records
Off-site storage is the best way to protect valuable data. By storing backup tapes of this vital data at an off-site location, your municipal government will minimize the consequences from unforeseen events at its primary data storage site...
Planning Ahead Can Help Cities Avoid Loss of Vital Services
Unless you’re the luckiest person alive, eventually you will have to recover from some type of disaster, whether it’s due to a hurricane or the simple loss of data from a PC hard drive crash...
Planning Your Event Can Prevent Trouble Down the Road
The variations and complexities of the special events provided by cities throughout the state are many...
Promoting Youth Engagement Through Youth Councils: Tips for Getting Started
Youth present local governments with exciting opportunities – and significant challenges – when it comes to engaging them in the community and the civic process...Many cities are discovering that when they set up youth councils and offer other meaningful leadership opportunities, young people want to be involved and will recruit their peers to join them...
Promoting Youth Participation
There is no one “right” way to promote youth participation in municipal government and youth involvement in local communities...
A Quick Civic Review
Just what is a Florida city? In Florida, a city is a municipal government. The founding citizens choose the name, and in doing so, decide whether to call the municipality a city, town or village...
Records, 8-Tracks and Other Reasons To Update Your Storage Media
Take on the daunting task of upgrading to a newer storage media and save yourself the cash and frustration that are sure to come later if you don’t.
Reduce the Liability of Your Recreational Facilities
Recreational activities are becoming increasingly popular with people of all ages as the public seeks exercise, general relaxation and socialization...
Relentless Spam-Eating Engines in Our Internet Universe
In an Internet galaxy, close, close by . . . “spam” was starting to get out of control. As you might have guessed, spam – also commonly referred to as unsolicited commercial e-mail, unsolicited bulk e-mail or junk e-mail – is most definitely not new, as the first-ever spam was sent in 1978...
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Selling Your Old Computers? Make Sure Your Important Data Isn't Part of the Deal
When old computers are discarded or sold to make way for newer computer systems, something has to happen to the data that used to reside on the old hard drive. Usually, during an upgrade, data is merely copied from the old to the new. That’s great – except that the data which was on the old hard drive may still be there...
Serving Our Members Is What the League of Cities Is All About
The League exists to serve municipal governments in Florida. It is important to understand that your feedback and participation in League-sponsored programs strengthens your organization...
Sister Cities International: Building Vibrant Youth Programs
“Young people participating in exchanges often find that they develop academically through understanding another language and culture,” says Elisa O’Keefe, director of the Sister Cities Youth and Education Network. “But they also develop assets like self-reliance and confidence..."
Sister Cities International: Promoting Peace and Global Cooperation - One Individual, One Community at a Time
At present, SCI represents more than 750 U.S. communities partnered with over 1,450 international communities in 122 countries. Sister-city programs have transformed themselves to respond to rapidly changing global needs and realities...
Spam: It's More Than Just An Annoyance
Spam, a minor nuisance just a couple of years ago, has proliferated to the point where it now places a tremendous strain on computer network resources and significantly affects employee productivity. It is estimated that nearly 40 percent of all Internet e-mail is unsolicited and unwanted...
Successful Events Can Help Your City Establish Its Identity
A successful event provides the community with a deep sense of pride. When residents gather in a comfortable environment, relationships form and strengthen, providing a platform for local governments to display their value and services...
Urban Forestry Programs Benefit Cities Large and Small
The U.S. Forest Service estimates that roughly 25 percent of our nation’s trees are located in urban areas, which range in size from fewer than 1,000 to more than 1 million residents. What is urban forestry all about?
Water at the Grass Roots
...In this article, we will take a look at a local water-management approach called low impact development, or LID. LID literally takes a grassroots approach to water protection. It is becoming popular in many cities around the country...
Who Controls Water Use?
...Florida’s complex system of water supply and water resource regulation does not lend a ready answer to this question. This article will attempt to frame an answer by breaking the question into two components: (1) who controls the withdrawal of groundwater or surface water, and (2) once it is withdrawn, who controls its supply or distribution for public use...
With New Camera Phones, You Never Know Who's Watching
Imagine standing in front of the cashier at your favorite grocery store, waiting for the last of your items to be rung up. You notice nothing unusual – restless kids in shopping carts, a guy talking on his cell phone behind you. What you don’t realize is that the guy on the cell phone has a camera-equipped cell phone, and that it’s pointed at your open checkbook...
What Do I Really Need To Know as an Elected Official?
The most helpful information answers questions that center around 1) getting the job done (as an elected official) and 2) what you need to know to be effective in office...
What To Do When the News Is You
It is never pleasant when you or your organization is under fire by the news media. But there are certain things you can do when dealing with unwanted media attention...
Why Have an E-Mail Policy?
The laundry list of lawsuits involving company e-mails and the multimillion-dollar settlements relating to improper e-mails leave little doubt as to whether or not e-mail policies and procedures should be a well-established practice in our public entities...
Working with the Media
You can always count on reporters to cover the controversial issues . . . but can you count on them to fairly present your side? And how do you get them to cover the issues you think matter most, the ones that aren’t controversial but are no less important?
The XYZ of Grants: Some Secrets of Grant-Writing Success
So your city has great ideas and not enough resources. A well-thought-out grant program can fill in the funding void...
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