Holding city council meetings downtown during weekday business hours makes them inaccessible to too many residents. To open up civic participation, local governments should rethink their scheduling and make the most of electronic tools.
Last year the city’s hotel occupancy rate reached 66.2 percent, up almost 13 percent from the year prior but still below pre-pandemic levels. Experts agree that sometimes the best mayors are simply the best cheerleaders.
Construction on the $1.5 billion, 25.3-mile stretch of dedicated bus lanes could begin late next year or early 2025 if approved. Yet residents are concerned that a planned overpass will undermine the local community.
If Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas wins, he may owe it all to his law-and-order message. Meanwhile, the North Carolina Supreme Court and promoting partisan gerrymandering, Doug La Follette steps down and more.
Kansas City tenants have formed a power base and are seeking equal footing with the forces that have traditionally defined how the city is governed.
To meet his goal of 500,000 new homes in the next decade, the New York City mayor has proposed new approaches to address the housing crisis, including creating incentives, single-room occupancies and more.
While improvements could take a decade to complete and cost more than $200 million, officials are hopeful that the city’s downtown transit system can improve its broken and run-down stations to boost ridership.
Ridership levels on the system’s Gold and Red lines were only 30 and 56 percent of pre-pandemic levels, respectively. Meanwhile, 22 people have died on Metro buses and trains since January and serious crime increased 24 percent last year.
To combat the problem, “sign rangers” are trained by the county attorney’s office to spot and remove illegal signage. State lawmakers are considering increasing penalties against sign bandits to as much as $5,000.
An initiative in Orange County, Calif., is taking an innovative approach to reducing social determinants of poor health. Screenings are vital, but social and environmental factors set the stage for the problems they detect.
Natural gas and electricity consumption by buildings are the city’s greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions, and yet there aren’t any city-mandated climate standards that buildings must meet.
A 2021 investigation revealed Chicago’s deeply flawed inspection system for identifying and responding to safety issues in residential buildings. Since the report was published, 53 more people have died in residential fires.
Missouri's Legislature has a plan to take over the police force in St. Louis. It's just one example of states taking direct control of public safety in their largest cities.
The vote will determine whether Madison, Ala., should transition from a mayor-council format to a council-manager format, which is unusual for the state. If approved, the city will have until 2025 to make the transition.
Though the Auditor of State hasn’t identified any government in Ohio that is improperly spending its pandemic funds, debates have sparked about whether the funds can be appropriately used on things like a new jail or improved baseball stadium.
Pandemic assistance to families at risk of food insecurity has ended. As a “hunger cliff” looms, programs in public libraries can fill gaps.
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