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Article Features By Jackie Krentzman

Gaining purchase: How three cities overcame the pandemic-fueled retail blues

Retail in California has struggled in recent years, especially businesses with smaller footprints. For some cities, this is just another potentially disastrous change they’ve turned into an opportunity. Here are some of the steps three cities have taken to support and grow their retail sector.

Article Local Works By Brian Lee-Mounger Hendershot

In this rural city, a ‘nothing off the table’ mindset gets housing built

California’s housing crisis stretches from one end of the state to the other. For many small cities, the odds often feel insurmountable. Huron — located in the state’s agricultural heartland — shows that progress is possible. Cities just can’t do it by themselves.

Article Features By Jan Perkins and Dan Keen

Essential tips for effective city council meetings

A group of residents watching a Lakewood city council meeting in person..

Effective governance doesn’t happen by chance. There is a cadence to a successful meeting, with a long chain of steps that start well before the meeting starts. Here are some best practices for smoother, more effective council meetings that staff and elected officials alike can use.

Article Features By Brian Lee-Mounger Hendershot

Oakland and Sacramento city attorneys: Civilian oversight is crucial to policing

A group of commission members sitting at a long dais.

More cities are using civilian oversight organizations to reform and oversee their police departments. But what these organizations can do varies from city to city. Western City sat down with city attorneys from Oakland and Sacramento to discuss their cities’ approaches to civilian oversight.

Article Features By Jeff Boyles

Firefighters can do much more than just put out fires

Fire departments,  like the Newport Beach Fire Department, can do much more than put out fires. A well-funded and well-trusted fire department can provide a wide range of social and public safety services.

The combined cost of funding public safety agencies can occupy over half of a city’s budget. Yet many fire departments’ emergency response systems are underutilized. As cities struggle to meet greater social needs, the fire service can lean into some of its strengths and fill some of those gaps.

Article Legal Notes By Matthew R. Silver, Lauren E. Brown, and Natalie Sahagun, Civica Law Group, APC

Don’t fly by these rules when developing a city drone program

More city officials are looking to drones for code enforcement and public safety. However, these uses are not without controversy. Critics have expressed concerns about privacy implications and a lack of adequate safeguards. Cities also need to consider legal and operational requirements.

Article Features By Teri Black, Maxine Gullo, Reina Schwartz, and Tony Winney

Investing in diversity may make you a better employer

Retirements, generational shifts, and changing attitudes about work-life balance have shifted employee loyalties and tenures. Many of us are wondering how to stop the churn and make our organizations places where people want to work for long stretches of their careers. One solution is to invest in diversity recruitment and retention.

Article Features By Amanda Cabral and Gail Carlson

California’s youth are anxious about climate change and need to see concrete action

California’s youth are worried about the climate crisis. They face a long future of climate extremes, with consequences for their health, well-being, education, and livelihood. Many are experiencing a great deal of eco-anxiety and are looking for help or ways to take action.

Article Features By Adam Link

Efforts to limit ‘forever chemicals’ are underway. What does this mean for cities?

PFAS are ubiquitous, virtually indestructible, and linked to significant health risks. We are only beginning to determine how to best manage, communicate, and ultimately assess liability for the cleanup.  

Article Local Works By Sarah Henry and Andrew Thomas

Alameda’s journey from restrictive to pro-housing policies

Alameda was the first Bay Area city to have its 2023-31 housing element certified by the state. How did a city that had restrictive and discriminatory land use regulations change its tune? For starters, it had a two-year conversation with the community about equity and housing.

Article Features By Jessica Sankus

Everything (well, almost) you need to know about sales tax but were afraid to ask

Have you ever wondered what happens with the sales tax you pay at a retail counter or online? What can cities do with that money? Here are 10 things you should know — but may have been afraid to ask — about California’s sales and use tax.

Article Features By Greg Kester and Adam Link

Wastewater treatment facilities could be a solution for cities’ organic waste challenges

Reducing methane emissions through SB 1383 is one of California’s primary climate change mitigation strategies. Municipal water resource recovery facilities could partner with the state for this, but some significant challenges need to be addressed first.

Article Features By Marina Wiant

Cities across California have adopted big new affordable housing plans. Now comes the hard part

Statewide affordable housing production is not growing fast enough to close the state’s housing gap. However, it is not impossible to reverse the trends that got us here — so long as we can learn from our mistakes.

Article Features By Shayne Kavanagh

Rethinking budgeting: An idea whose time has come

Local governments have developed their budgets in essentially the same way for decades — and for good reason. It is simple, predictable, and provides a sense of control. However, there are new forces that both make the traditional budget less tenable and offer new ways to achieve more optimal, fairer results.

Article Features By Melanie Perron

Legislative year in review: What city leaders need to know about 2022

California’s massive state budget surplus dominated every legislative conversation this year and lawmakers competed fiercely to ensure their priorities were passed. Through it all, Cal Cities fought for the best interests of cities: Cal Cities tracked or engaged with 1,430 bills and protected cities’ interests in the courts, at the federal level, and in the regulatory arena.

Article News from the Institute for Local Government By Roberto Carlos Torres

State and federal funding are advancing environmental justice. Here’s what that means for cities

Federal and state governments are funding environmental justice programs at record levels. For some cities, this raises an important question: What is environmental justice? The answer may look different for each city, but the processes are often similar.

Article Local Works By Alexander Hamilton

For a decade, the Oxnard Fire Department focused on improving mental health. Now, it’s helping others

A firefighter’s job is no longer about putting the wet stuff on the red stuff. The demands of the modern fire service can often have a negative impact on firefighters’ mental health. Peer support teams like the one in Oxnard are one way that cities can provide firefighters with the tools needed to bounce back from traumatic events.  

Article Local Works By Kristina Ray

Don’t delete the human: Five ways to humanize your high-tech communication

“Residents sending in pictures of their dogs” is not an official performance metric for the city of Carlsbad’s communication department. But it’s a perfect example of how the city’s new communications strategy has transformed the relationship between the city organization and the community it serves.

Article Local Works By Matthew Tate

Four steps to beef up your rural retail development strategy

Retail development is a critical part of creating communities where people can grow and prosper. However, rural markets are often overlooked during initial retail expansion plans. The rural communities of Blythe, Clearlake, and Fortuna have each invested in proactive retail attraction strategies that raise their profile, creating tangible, positive results in the process.

Article Features By Helene Schneider

The secret sauce: Creative ways California communities are addressing homelessness

Public agencies are often caught between demands for swift action to solve or hide homelessness and the reality that sustainable solutions take time, investment, and political will to bring to scale. Officials throughout California are finding bold, creative ways to break this decades-old stalemate.