City Staff v. City Council...who does what?

Sometimes we think of the city government as a very large, complex behemoth that cannot be challenged and is disconnected from the “real world.” So let’s take a look at how the City is organized and how the average citizen fits in.

We’ll start with City Council. The citizens of Elizabethton directly elect the Elizabethton City Council. When you go to the ballot box on Election Day the local person you are voting for is a City Councilperson and are called elected officials. Our City Council is what is called a representative legislative body. The seven people you elect represent the citizen’s wills and desires they want to see for Elizabethton. The City Council creates new city laws and regulations, creates policies to determine how to treat certain issues or situations, and approves the annual budget and large contractual agreements. The elected City Council also has the authority to hire and fire only the City Manager and no one else who works at the city.

City staff members are the people who work for the city and are not elected. These people are often called appointed officials, because they are to be hired based on their qualifications to hold the position that they do similar to the private sector. The City Manager is appointed by the City Council and the City Manager has the sole authority to hire and fire their city staff as they see necessary. This makes the City Manager a Chief Administrative Officer. It is the job of the City Manager and their city staff to carry out the policies and laws created by City Council. The City Manager and their city staff also serve as advisors to the City Council. As the Planning and Economic Development Director for the city, I am an appointed official and only have the authority to enforce regulations and laws, which City Council and the City Manager say I can enforce. I do not have the authority to create new regulations or laws.

Another area of the city is other City Boards. These may be the Library Board, Planning Commission, or Parks & Recreation Board. These Boards serve as a way to help City Council make better decisions, can serve as accountability for city departments, and they are made up of people appointed by City Council. Sometimes they have specific authority given to them by City Council to make very specific decisions, while other times they serve as an advisor to the City Council. They are often made up of multiple people with a specialized skill or interest relevant to the board they serve on. Rarely, do they have the ability to make new city laws without City Council approving these laws.

As you can see, the City is made up of many components and it’s important to know who they are, how you as a citizen fit in, and who you need to consult with a concern. After reading this, in what ways can you be involved in your local government. Let’s talk about it!

The Basic Organizational Chart of the City Government.

It Takes A Community to Recruit an Industry

Effective July 1, the City Manager has reorganized some departments in this city and my department was one. As some of you may know, I have now been assigned responsibilities of city economic development. While a large portion of my new responsibilities will be to focus on fostering an environment for development, I will continue to work with other economic development organizations including Carter County Tomorrow. More importantly, today I want to talk briefly about the economic development world of today.

Economic development today is vastly different today from what it was 20 or even 10 years ago (which I will refer to as yesterday). Yesterday, large factories employed hundreds of workers to produce products to be sold around the world. Today, these same large factories are reduced to half the physical size they once were and employ one-third (or less in some industries) of the workforce they once did. Much of this is due to advances in automation. A single machine or robot can take the place of many workers producing the same product faster, with less errors, and those machines don’t need to go home at night to sleep or take a break.

It is no secret that the US economy has shifted from a production economy to a service economy. Service industry jobs like accountants, customer service specialists, sales persons, and food preparers have taken the place of production industry jobs like a factory line worker. Yesterday these types businesses chose a location based on proximity to customers, tax incentives, and workforce availability. Today, businesses look for a location with proximity to their customers and have a high quality of life. Quality of life includes things like parks, recreation programs, good schools, unique places to hangout, entertainment options, and things to do -- the things that make a community enjoyable. Big businesses know that the community they choose will have a large impact on their employees and want to choose the best one so they can have healthy and happy employees with increased productivity.

Yesterday cities were largely responsible for the development of the local economy mainly through incentivising businesses to locate in an area. Today, cities, counties, schools, and other businesses in the community all play a very important role in recruiting a new business. This approach must include EVERYONE in the community. So as we look to the future of Elizabethton’s economy what can we do today to make our community an attractive location for business tomorrow? Let’s talk about it!

Investing in Main Street

As any small, startup business owner knows, getting access to capital is one of the most difficult parts of starting your own business. Working hours on a business plan, nervously presenting your plan to a loan officer as they begin to nit-pic your business apart, making changes to the plan and re-presenting the plan, only to anxiously wait a week to hear back to see if you got the loan or not. This is a tedious process and can take a lot of time and sometime you don’t walk away with as much capital as you think you might need.

This is where additional resources can step in. Crowdfunding has become very popular for helping people consolidate debt, helping someone purchase a new home, and even helping people pay for vacations. This is a tool that can also be utilized to help many of our small businesses get started!

The State of Michigan recently allowed municipalities and economic development organizations to create crowdfunding capital streams as a part of their Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. Through this process entrepreneurs work with organizations to learn the basics about running a businesses and, in-turn, have access to specific crowdfunding platforms. These platforms allow community members and anyone in the world to invest in a small business without have to go through traditional investment licensing. This brings capital investing to a hyper local level unlike anything else before. Businesses can borrow anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 for capital purposes.

Instead of investing in big business through the stock market or other investment brokerages, individual citizens have the opportunity to invest in local small businesses right in their home town. It could be your favorite restaurant needing to expand; your local salon wanting to hiring more stylists; a new, hip clothing store trying to startup that you want to see in your community -- all of these are ways that you can help your community.

Launch Chattanooga, a program targeted at helping startups in Chattanooga, has a similar type crowdfunding platform that is used to help startup businesses. This is a great way to help our small, local businesses expand, add more jobs, and help improve Elizabethton’s economy. Start the conversation about other ways we can help our small businesses when they are ready to take their business to the next level. You never know what that business could turn into some day. Let’s talk about it!

There’s a Park for Everyone

Everyone enjoys a park. Everytime I drive down West G Street someone is having a picnic, playing a pick-up game of basketball, or just enjoying the playground at Kiwanis Park. Parks can even be attractions, such as Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London, or even the National Mall in Washington D.C.

Parks come in a variety of types. There’s passive parks which often contain walking trails, picnic tables, benches, maybe a community garden, or other passive activities; active parks which incorporates elements such as playgrounds, various sports fields/courts, and other highly active activities; natural parks which are similar to many of our national parks or Roan Mountain state park; and garden parks which as similar to passive parks, but typically have more formal planting spaces, statuary, fountains, and the like. As you can see, parks aren’t just for kids, they’re for adults who want to remain active as they age, who want to take a quick walk and enjoy the beautiful flower beds and scenery, and who want to be involved in their community.

Parks can also help improve the public health of a community. As I mentioned earlier, parks can provide an outlet for recreation helping citizens be physically active and increase the fitness of the community. Trees, flowers, bushes, and other plantings often found in parks help to clean the air in a community. Parks also absorb storm water in the community reducing the amount of runoff and helping to prevent flooding of a neighborhood and keeping city resources from having to install new storm water lines.


The values of property surrounding parks can also be impacted by parks. Study after study has positively correlated a home or property value to its proximity to a park. Similar studies have also show such a relationship in neighborhoods with tree lined streets. In cities across the county, such as Chattanooga, property values more than doubled when a new park was developed. As property values increased so did the property and sales taxes resulting in additional revenue for the local governments.

Parks provide so many benefits to our community and we are lucky to have such a dedicated and caring parks staff here in Elizabethton. Parks are for everyone and we must keep that in mind when we improve and develop new parks. What additional improvements can we make to our current parks in order to make our parks more attractive to more people? Let’s talk about it!