How I am Suppose to do That

There are some council members who function on a belief system rather than a rational decision process. If they believe there are too many employees, no amount of data will influence their belief and their resulting decision. Sidewalk engineers rarely have the full financial and resource capacity issues to grapple with when informing the council member of the problems. They also rarely see the full picture of plans for achieving the goal.
Trust is a resource that is very important in the council-manager relationship and it can become hard to maintain when the lines between policy determination and policy implementation become blurred.
The elected and appointed officials in our community who can listen to all the participants while analyzing the past as they contemplate the future and make decisions based on a balanced system of scientific rationalism will become the leaders or groups of leaders regardless of position or organization.

Where Too Today

Your behavior follows your beliefs no matter how insightful, unstructured or bewildered your comprehension of the issue may be.

Will We Actually do This?

A component of the Comprehensive Plan is the City of Lake Mills Transportation Plan which includes the Sidewalk Plan adopted in August 2004 and updated in January 2005. This plan calls for the repair of existing sidewalks and retrofitting of new sidewalks in older parts of the community where sidewalks were never installed. The City’s subdivision regulation requires sidewalks in all public rights-of-way serving new residential and commercial developments, and has provisions ensuring pedestrian access to industrially zoned areas as well.

Efficient or Optimal

Although on paper the larger governments seem orderly and efficient, voters have distrusted recommendations of planners and political scientists who traditionally have postulated that "fragmentation" of local government is not economically rational. Still, the voters have instinctively sided with smaller, perceived more accountable, decentralized governments instead of metropolitan government or major consolidations.
What reasons and data may be offered to justify smaller governments instead of moving toward centralized local government? The optimum allocation of resources, or economic efficiency, could be the underlying principle. The true level and mixture of local services taxpayers wish to purchase (police and fire protection, parks, sanitation services, and sidewalks, for example) is more likely to be reflected when different packages of goods are offered by competing local jurisdictions. Since people have the opportunity to vote with their feet, they can move to the jurisdiction offering the combination and level of local services at a price (or level of taxes) that best suits them. Some may deem backyard garbage collection so important that they wish to pay for it. Others may opt for a less costly method, but highly value police cruising through their neighborhoods. When only one level of local service is available, as offered by one centralized government, people have no choice. Thus there is no competition, and taxes are likely to be higher. The local government is invariably under pressure to provide the best possible service at the lowest possible cost. Local officials must deal with the difficult and contradictory tasks of providing quality and efficiency of service, as well as a decent working environment at an acceptable cost level. An extremely efficient service might eliminate lines, but costs are likely to be very high. On the other hand, poor service by keeping people waiting in a stressful environment is not compatible with sound customer service and certainly does not provide a positive working condition. The key is to find the correct balance between the service offered and the cost of providing that service.

Just The Basics

As most municipal governments in Wisconsin have long started down the road to isomorphism because of financial and statutory conditions in the State/Nation. The ideas of the Wisconsin Way or Badger Basics now leading the discussion, one has to wonder what it will take to for municipals to break the mold and provide the set of services designed around the local population's preferences?
Is there a level of economic recovery or some level of social decline needed to again allow municipal governments to be the transformer of ideas?

Lake Mills 2010 Promissory Notes

The City has decided to raise funds through the issuance of GO debt for public purposes, including paying the cost of street construction, sidewalk and storm sewer improvements, acquisition of municipal equipment and other 2010 capital projects. The issuance and sale includes the refinancing of previously issued debt.
The City Attorney acts as City’s legal counsel. Bond investors need assurance that the City has properly authorized the bonds. Each entity must comply with both state laws and local authorizations. Thus, it is important that the legal counsel understands authorization rules. It is also important that the City Attorney review bond documents to ensure accuracy and that any City commitments in the bond documents do not run afoul of the City’s other policies and rules.
The City’s Bond Counsel is Quarles and Brady. Bond Counsel is an important resource in the debt issuance process. Bond Counsel opines on the legality of the bond offering, thereby acting as legal advisor to the ultimate investor.
Bond Counsel serves two primary functions:
Counsel ensures the bonds are legally authorized and issued.
Counsel issues a legal opinion as to the tax‐exempt status of the bonds. The legal opinion must be unconditional and is essential for a bond issue to be marketable.
Because of market demands, only a law firm that is recognized as Bond Counsel through experience should act as Bond Counsel. A local attorney or law firm inexperienced in bond matters will rarely be acceptable to the market. Local attorneys may be, and often are, employed for other purposes to assist with debt issuance. Although Bond Counsel are not specially certified or licensed, they must command the confidence and respect of the investment community.
The services of Bond Counsel include:
Determining whether legal and binding authority exists to issue the bonds.
Drafting a bond ordinance, resolution, or a trust indenture (for revenue bonds).
Drafting the notice of sale.
Examining all or part of the Official Statement.
Examining transcripts of proceedings to determine that the bonds were legally advertised and sold.
Submitting a written legal opinion on the tax-exempt status of the offering.
Determining that the bonds were legally executed.
Answering questions of the issuer, investment banker, or public official.
The City’s Financial Advisor, Ehlers & Associates provides a wide range of services to the City. In general, they will coordinate all elements of the bond sale from inception to closing. They are very competent and thoroughly knowledgeable in areas of local government laws and practices, investor attitudes and preferences, rating considerations, and the bond and money markets.
Ehlers & Associates manages the sale process leading up to the sale of the bonds and advises the City on business terms and the sale process.
Ehlers & Associates prepares an overall financing plan, advises on marketing the bonds, assists with a presentation rating agencies, calculates the timing of a bond sale, determines the range of interest costs for different alternative means of financing, provides an estimate of the underwriters’ fees, helps decide on the bond structure and call provisions, sets bid requirements, participates in a negotiated sale, evaluates the sale when it is finished, and participates in the preparation of the Official Statement to satisfy the informational needs of the prospective investors.

Next Move

On the Tuesday after July 4th, it's worth remembering that independence does not come cheap, and that there are some things that are more important than independence.
One of those things is the public trust. There is a serious cost to our society when government officials place their privacy rights regarding ethics enforcement related information above the public trust, that is, when government officials insist that their privacy is more important then the public’s right to know. And there is a cost to officials, too: their trial not by a neutral body in a formal proceeding that the public can have trust in, but rather by partisan accusations and media coverage based on the manipulation of limited facts and a limited understanding of the issues involved.
To reduce conflict of interest problems: there is a necessity to identify and disclose potential conflicts and the importance of council members to recuse themselves from the decision-making process when an actual conflict arises. Therefore, it is an important part of the proposed ethics ordinance requiring disclosure of information by all senior employees and council members in addressing the issue of conflicts.