COMMENTARY | The pandemic quickly shifted most community engagement to virtual arrangements, but not all citizens have ready access to online forums. Public officials can address inequities by finding alternative ways to gather valuable community input.
COMMENTARY | States and municipalities who have had to adopt remote services amid the coronavirus pandemic should scale up their digital infrastructure to maintain their ability to collect and reconcile payments. Doing so will help them to prevent disruptions to revenue flows and services.
Police officers, sheriff’s deputies and firefighters attended the pro-Trump rally held before the riot began. Many are now on administrative leave while agencies probe their actions.
Transfers by college students decreased by 8%, with disproportionate impacts to minorities and community-college students, according to research from the National Student Clearinghouse.
Public health leaders say the president-elect’s idea for a corps to help with contact tracing would miss the mark of current needs on the ground, saying they are looking for broader, and more long lasting, federal support.
COMMENTARY | The challenges facing local governments are bigger than ever and tackling them will require building cultures inside city halls committed to using data and making decisions based on evidence.
Wilbur, a 6-month-old French bulldog, is the latest canine mayor of Rabbit Hash, an unincorporated community in Kentucky that's been led by dogs since the late 1990s.
The city passed a pit-bull ban in 1989 after multiple people reported being attacked by the breed, although research has shown that such policies have little effect on public safety.
Trick-or-treating is still happening, but with new restrictions or guidance, and most cities have canceled Halloween parades, festivals and haunted houses.
New York City, Boston and Seattle top the 2020 Clean Energy Scorecard, which ranks 100 cities on local efforts to implement clean energy policy. But only 20 cities are on track to meet their own community climate goals.
The virus brought about sudden changes to the way cities do business, some of which could stick. Local government leaders discussed this and other ways cities might transform during the final day of Route Fifty's Future Cities event.
Next week, Route Fifty will host Future Cities—a weeklong digital experience that will help government officials envision what the next decade of city government could look like.
A June survey by the National Park and Recreation Association found that a majority of Americans consider parks an essential government service, but decreased revenue from the coronavirus pandemic is likely to threaten parks funding in the future.