Decision-Making

The fundamental job of a governing body member is to make policy decisions for his or her municipality. Unless decisions are based on full, relevant and accurate information and with a clear objective in view, the results are likely to be mediocre at best and meaningless at worst. In fact, in view of the part-time, temporary involvement of most local governing body officials in Wisconsin, the political pressures under which local decisions must be made and the frequent lack of up-to-date, accurate, verifiable information available to these decision-makers, the process has worked surprisingly well.

Decisions of local governing bodies generally fall into three categories: 1) those regarding projects or facilities; 2) those with respect to services, and 3) those relating to the need for regulations affecting the health, safety or welfare of the municipality’s residents. See Wright, J. Ward, and Benson, Virginia, “Your Local Economy: Does City Hall Play a Role?”, Nation’s Cities, September 1972, p. 45.

The process of making decisions with respect to any of these three principal areas of municipal activity can be divided into six stages:

1. “Need. The process whereby it is determined that something needs to be done. Such determination is usually based on an awareness of community conditions.

2. “Solutions. The process of determining which government is responsible, what resources are available, what the scope of responsibility is, and the manner in which an answer to the problem should be formulated.

3. “Projects. The development of plans for specific allocations of resources to specified agencies to undertake given actions for specified purposes.

4. “Approval. The official act by which action is authorized and resources are allocated.

5. “Administration. The action of management in issuing directives, supervising activities, reviewing results, and making required adjustments.

6. “Evaluation. The process of reporting and reviewing, whereby the policy-makers may determine the success or failure of the programs, in whole or in part, in meeting the needs defined in the first stage.”

Unfortunately, substantial impediments frequently exist which diminish effective city council or village board involvement in all stages of a decision. These include, among others, the existence of semi-independent agencies financed and/or sanctioned by state and federal largess and laws which may have progressed to the fourth stage of the process before bringing a project to the council or board for consideration and approval. In addition, there may be a large time span over which projects or issues may extend, resulting in numerous changes in the composition of the decision-making body or a change in attitude of the citizenry or even a change in need for the project or service itself which can hamper effective decision-making.

Perhaps, in view of these impediments, governing body officials may have to console themselves with the satisfaction of having made informed and intelligent decisions after thorough study and deliberation even if in retrospect the particular project, service or rule fails to achieve its anticipated goal.