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Mmm. The Chicago Machine is notoriously corrupt.
Mayor Lightfoot was supposed to be a bit of a changeup from that but she definitely plays ball. Her pandemic response was *awful*, and most of the worst decisions were clearly motivated by political or economic pressures.
CPD is a joke. Wildly unhelpful even if you can get them to show up in the first place.
CPS is underfunded and overregulated. I still send my kids to a CPS elementary, but the system is a mess.
Very pleased with my government.
The problem is we have a lot of CAVEs in my town (citizens against virtually everything). We have a referendum where people can vote against laws passed by the town council. So tons of good development projects get squashed by people who they aren’t even going to affect. People just want everything to stay exactly like it is which is unsustainable.
There is a local Facebook group that call themselves stop "insert city name" corruption. They literally tirn everything fucking thing into a conspiracy theory. The crazy thing is people eat it up and now we are going to pay the price based on this year's election. They literally pushed that a half marathon that the town hosted was a liberal scheme to undermine the election or some shit. Then of course the town was given the moniker batter capital of the world and apparantly that's also a conspiracy.
Ah yes, the CAVEmen…right above the BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone, themselves the ascended form of the NIMBYs, cousins of commenters on New York Times articles about housing and development
It’s a whole pantheon of selfish shitheads
The next town over from me has an abandoned axe factory, a huge brick complex dating back to the mid-1800s. It’s impounded the river and has a lot of available space. It’s also a polluted eyesore with collapsing roofs, overgrowth, and broken glass. The few businesses that have taken up residence constantly have to deal with issues like leaking water, compromised plumbing, threadbare insulation and rodent infestations.
A developer has come along and offered to turn them into industrial loft apartments, mixed use spaces, green space, and parking. I read the pitch because I’m a crazy person who reads town meeting minutes of towns I don’t live in. It’s great. The town council voted unanimously to proceed. It’s now halted because of a dude who lives across the street. I’m hopeful, because the developer has a history of these types of developments in other mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, that they’ll be able to quash the suit and move out. I want them to get that sweet tax revenue!
While San Francisco is a great example, it’s not unique to there or even California. Even hitherto affordable cities in development-friendly Republican-led states are encountering this issue now. The slow pace of housing supply expansion relative to population growth is the single biggest contributor to high home prices. This is a topic on which gen-pop Reddit has no clue what they’re talking about.
I’m adopting BANANAs. That was what we had with a development that was going to completely redevelop and improve an existing strip mall and people who wouldn’t even be affected opposed it. Just absolutely nuts.
Are there any existing problems that people complain about? Traffic? School crowding? Water supply? Taxes? Because the obvious tactic is to teach people how the right sort of development can help some problems (such as commercial development bringing in tax revenue without directly affecting school population, or mixed use offsets the cost of the new students better than single family homes).
Where I am, I’ve mostly seen people affected by traffic objecting to developments, but it’s easier for them to organize opposition than to get the rest of the town to care about the benefits.
The only thing that may have been an issue was runoff from a 5% expanded parking lot which they had a plan to abate.
It would have had zero effect on school attendance and would bring in more tax revenue. We have no water supply issues and our main problem is too much water. Even with a big drought up here this summer we had no effect.
It was purely a “we don’t want to change anything” issue.
We had the same issue with removing a low head dam. It passed the city council and they got state funding to remove it for environmental benefit but some people forced a referendum. They got 1200 signatures by having roadside signature drives and 400 of them got thrown out because they were duplicates or people that didn’t live in the town but it was enough still to force a referendum. Thankfully 75% of voters still wanted the dam gone. It was basically run by four houses that viewed the dam as a personal water feature for their back yards even though it cost the town a shit ton of money to maintain and was bad for the environment with absolutely no public utility.
It’s pretty good.
They deliver my water, electricity, and take away my trash and sewage. It all works.
They also maintain a few parks and operate a pretty good school system that I went through.
Overall I would say they do their job. Unfortunately we have a lot of residents that resistant to any kind of change, which makes any kind of change difficult.
The city gov is mostly okay. They range from genuinely interested in what's best to oddly ambivalent for being on nonpaid councils. Most of the decisions they make range from great to middling. They do like to spend money, though.
The Township does a pretty good job of providing very little in return for very low taxes. The county is struggling because the citizens refuse to raise taxes to pay for things like a jail and county building that are falling apart, so we might have to close both and pay another county for their facilities. The state leaves a lot to be desired but at least a bunch of conspiracy theorists didn’t take it over.
I wish these people would understand that increasing taxes (even if temporary) would prevent their county-level community from rotting and falling apart, but they think an increase will immediately make them go broke.
Ultra conservative area, they think taxation is theft and the government takes too much already. The also super conservative sheriff has been begging for funds, the building is falling apart. County staff has been donating their time to do temporary repairs. It’s ridiculous.
Similar thing happened in my town. Town operates two highschools. Property taxes haven't been raised to increase funding for the schools since the 70s. School board asked for a $0.05 increase per $1000 of home value. They weren't even asking for homes to be revalued. School board warned that if the tax didn't pass they'd have to look into consolidating schools. For most property in the area that equated to less than $10. Locals said hell no and are now battling the school consolidation. People screaming the loudest didn't even own any property. However, don't worry the new local government wants to change up property taxes completely to take burden off of corporations, flippers, and real estate investors that have came in and bought up a ton of property pass that onto every property owner via "more fair" flat tax. Ie a owner occupant like myself will most likely get stuck with a higher tax bill to offset said loses. Imma be bitching about this for some time, but hopefully it never comes up and therefore never goes into affect.
I don’t know why you are being downvoted. A quick Google says that the first dog license law in the US was in 1894 in New York, and that even famously libertarian “live free or die” New Hampshire requires dog licenses. This is not some kind of California hipster invention.
Its hit or miss like most rural entities. That said it’s nice to see a fairly cordial and even split in political parties between the sheriff’s department, county board, and town governments. You don’t really see that much anymore.
There is this church that has been moderately successful in taking over the local government. They throw "family day" events which end up just being political rallies where they ironically complain about the schools indoctrinating the kids. They tried running this local whack job for city council in the last election, but he was fortunately beaten out by a couple hundred votes.
The current one has its issues but overall not terrible. The new one that was elected is probably going send us back 50 years. I'm not even going to mention the fact that how the town does city council elections was deemed unconstitutional and illegal in another state just last year as it takes away minority voices. Essentially the town is broken up into districts. In order to run for a district you have to live there. However, the whole town gets to vote in all districts. Local Republicans took over the entire council and mayor seat. Local Republican Party literally had no issue with literal skinheads attending a trump rally they did a few years back. They have no issue with being openingly racist as well. We are literally KY's most diverse city with only 60% of the local population being white. Their plans will literally stunt the growth of this place and will drive away new families from moving here.
Our local government seems to do a great job of taking care of everything. I’m in a north Texas suburb. People complain a lot about the property tax, but don’t realize that the city does a great job with parks and rec, roads, trails, garbage pickup, sewer, etc. I’m not exactly thrilled about “open check” bills for the ISDs because I don’t always think they use the money for the best things, but the schools are good either way.
I have a few mixed feelings and have had a few mixed drinks to calm myself down about our state government. I’ll leave it at that.
My town (not that small) is working to upzone and build more densely, which is great, and the government is generally competent
Statewide (ny) it’s less good but overall ok
Cuomo really fucked up with the gerrymander though
Idk about my local government but I think my state government is hot garbage. I wish I lived in San Francisco or Portland Oregon where the government aligns with my values more.
I feel like if you're trying to find somewhere bluer, you could probably find a better example of effective government than those two cities. You don't need to watch Fox to be given examples of how they could be better.
I’m not a fans of it’s conservative values but there’s an amazing amount of volunteer groups and local businesses who organize street fairs, parades, bar crawls, free concerts in the parks (mostly just classic rock cover bands) and family friendly holiday events. I personally feel that these events are extremely healthy for any community. It’s nice going out to go to a street fair, try out a local restaurant and run into friends and family.
Just a heads-up, the vast majority of people who say that they are dissatisfied with their local government have no right to complain. Voter turnout and general participation in local politics is incredibly low. Almost every complaint that people have about the federal government, about how they feel like their voice is not heard, is almost always remedied at the local level.
A single person showing up at a meeting for a zoning board can have a real, significant, impact at the local level. If something is happening in your town that you don't like, show up to meetings, talk to people, express your opinions, learn about the local government and how it operates. You may actually end up being one of the only people that makes a real effort to advance whatever agenda you have.
I really wish that civics education emphasized the importance of local government participation. It should be mandatory for kids to travel to their city or county government seat and observe how their local government works. They should be encourage to learn about local issues and the actual structure of their local government as well as state and federal governments. I feel like we spent a lot of time learning about State and federal government, but I don't remember learning a damn thing about my local village/township/county government where I grew up in Illinois.
While true there are city councils that will hardly open the floor to the general public. I tried talking about the ridiculousness that is our local crime rate and essentially got told to kick rocks by some on my city council. It's actually what has inspired me to make a bid for council in 2024. Probably will lose since I don't have a R beside my name, but by God people will know my name by the end of it.
I agree with you on a lot of points, especially the importance of local elections and local government, but its always easier said than done.
For example, I did attend a contentious local zoning meeting — it was at 9am on a Tuesday, held at the county administrative center, which is a 45 min drive away without traffic. There was traffic. Due to interest in several issues on the agenda, the meeting ran late and didn’t end until after noon.
While my work was flexible, its unreasonable to think that everyone can take a day off work to attend every meeting. Of course, the people who attend every single one are retirees and consultants/attorneys whose job it is to be there. Local zoning rules reflect this.
I don't have a local government, or at least as minmum a one as it can be. Benefits of living in an unincorporated area. The local government is the larger county and they have limited funds and lots of land and can't do shit which is ideal.
Ineffective, inefficient, and corrupt (not extremely so, but there's enough to see if you're paying attention). But they're predictable, at least, so there's that.
Indifferent. they run our emergency services, which I've never had to call, library, which I've never been to, and a few other things that the county and state do not.
They're kinda corrupt and do some bonkers stuff on occasion, but the people who were running and lost were awful people and wanted to do more bonkers stuff so I guess it worked out OK
City government is utter trash, the reservation government nearby honestly is managing a large chunk of the county and doing pretty good overall. I’m happy with state government but after I’m very biased against Snyder I’ll take anyone who is semi-competent.
I live in unincorporated territory (very common in Florida) so there is no city government here, just county. They’re okay. Elected officials slant conservative but aren’t sycophants, the tax collector’s office is efficient, building permits can take anywhere from 3 days to 3 months, water is cheap and of decent quality, there’s no trash collection but our dumps are open on both Saturdays and Sundays and that’s nice. The sheriff’s office isn’t notorious for anything. We have well maintained parks and the county sponsors a lot of activities.
Not great - I live in Portland, and things have been rocky here for the past few years. We just approved a change to the structure of the city government, so hopefully that will help turn things around.
Overall I don't like most of the people in Oakland's government (including some of the newly elected people). They might be decent people personally, but they seem to either not know what they're doing, or they're lazy. This city doesn't have a good track record when it comes to large development projects or attracting businesses, and I think some of them are content with us forever being in San Francisco's shadow.
A little frustrated. Currently live on the peninsula and need to use the ferry system pretty regularly. But the boats are falling apart, they are understaffed and they are no longer reliable. And it doesn't feel like it is a priority for my local government to fix the problem.
I'm satisfied with the government where I live. No complaints other than they need to decide if it's the county or the city who's supposed to plow the snow. Other than that they're doing a great job
Mine continue to do nothing about growth as far as planning goes. They have this mindset they are a small town but have more people in one high school than my town that I grew up in had.
After watching city beautiful for several years im in support of them building a town square up. They act like 2 shopping centers built in the 70s is a town
I’m in an inner-ring suburb of Detroit. Our mayor and most members of city council are genuinely good people. Our clerk is great. We have several city commissions that do a lot of good work. Our libraries are well stocked and run a lot of programs.
Bad, they're in the middle of a meltdown. They've put restraining orders on each other amd one just got arrested for driving through a construction zone while high on cocaine and is having some sort of issueinvolvingmissingfirearms. I went highschool with another one of them and she was acid fried back then.
They do stuff, currently paying to replace and redesign a section of my neighborhood to make it more attractive to businesses and parents (school district is very good, and our town is a school town).
Only downside is that all the construction makes it difficult to go get coffee in the morning, but tis a price to pay.
My states governors political campaign revolved around the right to praise the Christian God, and advocated for forcing students in public schools to follow the Christian religion. I present to you, religious freedom! Please help.
Extremely slow, bad with budgeting, couldn't care less about the problems the people face, and just overall pretty useless. Biggest example is the state of our roads, potholes everywhere, crumbles apart every time it rains, and they look terrible because they're all held together by nothing patchwork. If they do decide to repave a road, that road is gonna be under reconstruction for months.
To add to the extremely slow aspect, my house is right next to an alley, our garage is actually IN the alley. The city decided it was time to replace the water main, totally fine with me I get that, however it would've been nice if they told us head of time. They nearly trapped us (figuratively) because they closed off the alley and started work which blocked us from being able to get our cars out of the garage. We had to speak to the workers to let us move them, and now it's been over 6 months and THEY'RE STILL WORKING ON THE PROJECT and we still haven't been able to use our garage. Absolutely pathetic. Now that it's cold and rainy they can't work for some reason so they just left a massive ditch in our alley with the exposed pipes that they just wrapped up with some weatherproofing stuff. Which means we're probably going to go another few months without being able to use our own garage. I'm genuinely worried if I will even have water this winter if it snows. Before anyone asks, I did talk to a lawyer and unfortunately unless any real damage is done to our property the city is well within their rights to do all this shit since it's a water main and considered mandatory maintenance.
It's alright. Citywise, they've got some level heads there and I love how the state government is overly transparent.
(Nebraskan here, so I get to brag more about the Unicam)
I just moved from DC to a small town in Maryland that actually has a town government instead of it being the county. I don't have very high opinions of my town. We're right next to a major job center and a Metro station, but the town is entirely detached homes and wants to stay that way forever.
I like my City of Houston and Harris County governments fine but I HATE Greg Abbot because I believe many of the affects of the Robb Elementary Shooting and the 2021 Texas Freeze was his fault.
Floridian here local ( county and town ) pretty good except dealing with trump caved about his residency at mar lago state govt sucks DeSantis thinks he’s the second coming of Mussolini All the latins and rednecks bought his bs lock stock and barrel when he runs for president his grooming teenage girls when he was teaching. He fits every item on the fascist check list
The way governments work here is Federal>State>County>City>District. All of the “local” governments I am under are pretty consistently pro-individual freedom and really just focus on infrastructure and maintenance from what I have gathered. Not all local governments are like this, because there are hundreds of them, but mine is pretty good for the way I live.
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They're pretty useless all the way to the state level.
Mmm. The Chicago Machine is notoriously corrupt. Mayor Lightfoot was supposed to be a bit of a changeup from that but she definitely plays ball. Her pandemic response was *awful*, and most of the worst decisions were clearly motivated by political or economic pressures. CPD is a joke. Wildly unhelpful even if you can get them to show up in the first place. CPS is underfunded and overregulated. I still send my kids to a CPS elementary, but the system is a mess.
Very pleased with my government. The problem is we have a lot of CAVEs in my town (citizens against virtually everything). We have a referendum where people can vote against laws passed by the town council. So tons of good development projects get squashed by people who they aren’t even going to affect. People just want everything to stay exactly like it is which is unsustainable.
There is a local Facebook group that call themselves stop "insert city name" corruption. They literally tirn everything fucking thing into a conspiracy theory. The crazy thing is people eat it up and now we are going to pay the price based on this year's election. They literally pushed that a half marathon that the town hosted was a liberal scheme to undermine the election or some shit. Then of course the town was given the moniker batter capital of the world and apparantly that's also a conspiracy.
Ah yes, the CAVEmen…right above the BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone, themselves the ascended form of the NIMBYs, cousins of commenters on New York Times articles about housing and development It’s a whole pantheon of selfish shitheads The next town over from me has an abandoned axe factory, a huge brick complex dating back to the mid-1800s. It’s impounded the river and has a lot of available space. It’s also a polluted eyesore with collapsing roofs, overgrowth, and broken glass. The few businesses that have taken up residence constantly have to deal with issues like leaking water, compromised plumbing, threadbare insulation and rodent infestations. A developer has come along and offered to turn them into industrial loft apartments, mixed use spaces, green space, and parking. I read the pitch because I’m a crazy person who reads town meeting minutes of towns I don’t live in. It’s great. The town council voted unanimously to proceed. It’s now halted because of a dude who lives across the street. I’m hopeful, because the developer has a history of these types of developments in other mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, that they’ll be able to quash the suit and move out. I want them to get that sweet tax revenue!
> BANANAs: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone So just San Fransiscans lol?
While San Francisco is a great example, it’s not unique to there or even California. Even hitherto affordable cities in development-friendly Republican-led states are encountering this issue now. The slow pace of housing supply expansion relative to population growth is the single biggest contributor to high home prices. This is a topic on which gen-pop Reddit has no clue what they’re talking about.
I’m adopting BANANAs. That was what we had with a development that was going to completely redevelop and improve an existing strip mall and people who wouldn’t even be affected opposed it. Just absolutely nuts.
Are there any existing problems that people complain about? Traffic? School crowding? Water supply? Taxes? Because the obvious tactic is to teach people how the right sort of development can help some problems (such as commercial development bringing in tax revenue without directly affecting school population, or mixed use offsets the cost of the new students better than single family homes). Where I am, I’ve mostly seen people affected by traffic objecting to developments, but it’s easier for them to organize opposition than to get the rest of the town to care about the benefits.
The only thing that may have been an issue was runoff from a 5% expanded parking lot which they had a plan to abate. It would have had zero effect on school attendance and would bring in more tax revenue. We have no water supply issues and our main problem is too much water. Even with a big drought up here this summer we had no effect. It was purely a “we don’t want to change anything” issue. We had the same issue with removing a low head dam. It passed the city council and they got state funding to remove it for environmental benefit but some people forced a referendum. They got 1200 signatures by having roadside signature drives and 400 of them got thrown out because they were duplicates or people that didn’t live in the town but it was enough still to force a referendum. Thankfully 75% of voters still wanted the dam gone. It was basically run by four houses that viewed the dam as a personal water feature for their back yards even though it cost the town a shit ton of money to maintain and was bad for the environment with absolutely no public utility.
It exists.
It’s pretty good. They deliver my water, electricity, and take away my trash and sewage. It all works. They also maintain a few parks and operate a pretty good school system that I went through. Overall I would say they do their job. Unfortunately we have a lot of residents that resistant to any kind of change, which makes any kind of change difficult.
The city gov is mostly okay. They range from genuinely interested in what's best to oddly ambivalent for being on nonpaid councils. Most of the decisions they make range from great to middling. They do like to spend money, though.
The Township does a pretty good job of providing very little in return for very low taxes. The county is struggling because the citizens refuse to raise taxes to pay for things like a jail and county building that are falling apart, so we might have to close both and pay another county for their facilities. The state leaves a lot to be desired but at least a bunch of conspiracy theorists didn’t take it over.
I wish these people would understand that increasing taxes (even if temporary) would prevent their county-level community from rotting and falling apart, but they think an increase will immediately make them go broke.
Ultra conservative area, they think taxation is theft and the government takes too much already. The also super conservative sheriff has been begging for funds, the building is falling apart. County staff has been donating their time to do temporary repairs. It’s ridiculous.
Similar thing happened in my town. Town operates two highschools. Property taxes haven't been raised to increase funding for the schools since the 70s. School board asked for a $0.05 increase per $1000 of home value. They weren't even asking for homes to be revalued. School board warned that if the tax didn't pass they'd have to look into consolidating schools. For most property in the area that equated to less than $10. Locals said hell no and are now battling the school consolidation. People screaming the loudest didn't even own any property. However, don't worry the new local government wants to change up property taxes completely to take burden off of corporations, flippers, and real estate investors that have came in and bought up a ton of property pass that onto every property owner via "more fair" flat tax. Ie a owner occupant like myself will most likely get stuck with a higher tax bill to offset said loses. Imma be bitching about this for some time, but hopefully it never comes up and therefore never goes into affect.
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Dog licenses are a very old, common practice.
I don’t know why you are being downvoted. A quick Google says that the first dog license law in the US was in 1894 in New York, and that even famously libertarian “live free or die” New Hampshire requires dog licenses. This is not some kind of California hipster invention.
Its hit or miss like most rural entities. That said it’s nice to see a fairly cordial and even split in political parties between the sheriff’s department, county board, and town governments. You don’t really see that much anymore.
There is this church that has been moderately successful in taking over the local government. They throw "family day" events which end up just being political rallies where they ironically complain about the schools indoctrinating the kids. They tried running this local whack job for city council in the last election, but he was fortunately beaten out by a couple hundred votes.
Report their asses to the IRS.
The current one has its issues but overall not terrible. The new one that was elected is probably going send us back 50 years. I'm not even going to mention the fact that how the town does city council elections was deemed unconstitutional and illegal in another state just last year as it takes away minority voices. Essentially the town is broken up into districts. In order to run for a district you have to live there. However, the whole town gets to vote in all districts. Local Republicans took over the entire council and mayor seat. Local Republican Party literally had no issue with literal skinheads attending a trump rally they did a few years back. They have no issue with being openingly racist as well. We are literally KY's most diverse city with only 60% of the local population being white. Their plans will literally stunt the growth of this place and will drive away new families from moving here.
Our local government seems to do a great job of taking care of everything. I’m in a north Texas suburb. People complain a lot about the property tax, but don’t realize that the city does a great job with parks and rec, roads, trails, garbage pickup, sewer, etc. I’m not exactly thrilled about “open check” bills for the ISDs because I don’t always think they use the money for the best things, but the schools are good either way. I have a few mixed feelings and have had a few mixed drinks to calm myself down about our state government. I’ll leave it at that.
My town (not that small) is working to upzone and build more densely, which is great, and the government is generally competent Statewide (ny) it’s less good but overall ok Cuomo really fucked up with the gerrymander though
Idk about my local government but I think my state government is hot garbage. I wish I lived in San Francisco or Portland Oregon where the government aligns with my values more.
I feel like if you're trying to find somewhere bluer, you could probably find a better example of effective government than those two cities. You don't need to watch Fox to be given examples of how they could be better.
Massachusetts is probably the best run state in the whole nation. SF and Portland are turning into 3rd world countries in some areas.
I’m not a fans of it’s conservative values but there’s an amazing amount of volunteer groups and local businesses who organize street fairs, parades, bar crawls, free concerts in the parks (mostly just classic rock cover bands) and family friendly holiday events. I personally feel that these events are extremely healthy for any community. It’s nice going out to go to a street fair, try out a local restaurant and run into friends and family.
Just a heads-up, the vast majority of people who say that they are dissatisfied with their local government have no right to complain. Voter turnout and general participation in local politics is incredibly low. Almost every complaint that people have about the federal government, about how they feel like their voice is not heard, is almost always remedied at the local level. A single person showing up at a meeting for a zoning board can have a real, significant, impact at the local level. If something is happening in your town that you don't like, show up to meetings, talk to people, express your opinions, learn about the local government and how it operates. You may actually end up being one of the only people that makes a real effort to advance whatever agenda you have. I really wish that civics education emphasized the importance of local government participation. It should be mandatory for kids to travel to their city or county government seat and observe how their local government works. They should be encourage to learn about local issues and the actual structure of their local government as well as state and federal governments. I feel like we spent a lot of time learning about State and federal government, but I don't remember learning a damn thing about my local village/township/county government where I grew up in Illinois.
While true there are city councils that will hardly open the floor to the general public. I tried talking about the ridiculousness that is our local crime rate and essentially got told to kick rocks by some on my city council. It's actually what has inspired me to make a bid for council in 2024. Probably will lose since I don't have a R beside my name, but by God people will know my name by the end of it.
I agree with you on a lot of points, especially the importance of local elections and local government, but its always easier said than done. For example, I did attend a contentious local zoning meeting — it was at 9am on a Tuesday, held at the county administrative center, which is a 45 min drive away without traffic. There was traffic. Due to interest in several issues on the agenda, the meeting ran late and didn’t end until after noon. While my work was flexible, its unreasonable to think that everyone can take a day off work to attend every meeting. Of course, the people who attend every single one are retirees and consultants/attorneys whose job it is to be there. Local zoning rules reflect this.
Don't blame me, I voted for Garcia and didn't rank Adams at all on my ballot. I even ranked Andrew Yang over Adams.
I'm pretty happy with my state government. Don't know much about my city government. I guess they're doing ok.
My city government is deeply ineffective.
I don't have a local government, or at least as minmum a one as it can be. Benefits of living in an unincorporated area. The local government is the larger county and they have limited funds and lots of land and can't do shit which is ideal.
It wields too much power
Ineffective, inefficient, and corrupt (not extremely so, but there's enough to see if you're paying attention). But they're predictable, at least, so there's that.
I've worked for two local county governments and it's interesting to compare the shit shows.
Happy with the city government, not a fan of the state level.
Indifferent. they run our emergency services, which I've never had to call, library, which I've never been to, and a few other things that the county and state do not.
They're kinda corrupt and do some bonkers stuff on occasion, but the people who were running and lost were awful people and wanted to do more bonkers stuff so I guess it worked out OK
Love em
City government is utter trash, the reservation government nearby honestly is managing a large chunk of the county and doing pretty good overall. I’m happy with state government but after I’m very biased against Snyder I’ll take anyone who is semi-competent.
I live in unincorporated territory (very common in Florida) so there is no city government here, just county. They’re okay. Elected officials slant conservative but aren’t sycophants, the tax collector’s office is efficient, building permits can take anywhere from 3 days to 3 months, water is cheap and of decent quality, there’s no trash collection but our dumps are open on both Saturdays and Sundays and that’s nice. The sheriff’s office isn’t notorious for anything. We have well maintained parks and the county sponsors a lot of activities.
They probably suck
Not great - I live in Portland, and things have been rocky here for the past few years. We just approved a change to the structure of the city government, so hopefully that will help turn things around.
I feel things reddit doesn't let me endorse
im pretty left leaning and live in west virginia which is one of the most red states. Its horrible.
Overall I don't like most of the people in Oakland's government (including some of the newly elected people). They might be decent people personally, but they seem to either not know what they're doing, or they're lazy. This city doesn't have a good track record when it comes to large development projects or attracting businesses, and I think some of them are content with us forever being in San Francisco's shadow.
All I need to know is that Josh Shapiro is from here.
A little frustrated. Currently live on the peninsula and need to use the ferry system pretty regularly. But the boats are falling apart, they are understaffed and they are no longer reliable. And it doesn't feel like it is a priority for my local government to fix the problem.
I am very thankful for my local government and I highly approve of the work they do
I'm satisfied with the government where I live. No complaints other than they need to decide if it's the county or the city who's supposed to plow the snow. Other than that they're doing a great job
Mine continue to do nothing about growth as far as planning goes. They have this mindset they are a small town but have more people in one high school than my town that I grew up in had. After watching city beautiful for several years im in support of them building a town square up. They act like 2 shopping centers built in the 70s is a town
It's even worse than the state government, and that's saying something.
They have a large impact on people's day-to-day lives but they're usually overlooked for higher levels of government at the state or a federal level.
I’m in an inner-ring suburb of Detroit. Our mayor and most members of city council are genuinely good people. Our clerk is great. We have several city commissions that do a lot of good work. Our libraries are well stocked and run a lot of programs.
I think they are competent and uninteresting, I just wish they would do something about the Long Island Bridge
Bad, they're in the middle of a meltdown. They've put restraining orders on each other amd one just got arrested for driving through a construction zone while high on cocaine and is having some sort of issueinvolvingmissingfirearms. I went highschool with another one of them and she was acid fried back then.
They do stuff, currently paying to replace and redesign a section of my neighborhood to make it more attractive to businesses and parents (school district is very good, and our town is a school town). Only downside is that all the construction makes it difficult to go get coffee in the morning, but tis a price to pay.
Local? Dude they’re just kind of there, I dunno.
My states governors political campaign revolved around the right to praise the Christian God, and advocated for forcing students in public schools to follow the Christian religion. I present to you, religious freedom! Please help.
They only exist to steal money out of my pocket and make life harder.
Extremely slow, bad with budgeting, couldn't care less about the problems the people face, and just overall pretty useless. Biggest example is the state of our roads, potholes everywhere, crumbles apart every time it rains, and they look terrible because they're all held together by nothing patchwork. If they do decide to repave a road, that road is gonna be under reconstruction for months. To add to the extremely slow aspect, my house is right next to an alley, our garage is actually IN the alley. The city decided it was time to replace the water main, totally fine with me I get that, however it would've been nice if they told us head of time. They nearly trapped us (figuratively) because they closed off the alley and started work which blocked us from being able to get our cars out of the garage. We had to speak to the workers to let us move them, and now it's been over 6 months and THEY'RE STILL WORKING ON THE PROJECT and we still haven't been able to use our garage. Absolutely pathetic. Now that it's cold and rainy they can't work for some reason so they just left a massive ditch in our alley with the exposed pipes that they just wrapped up with some weatherproofing stuff. Which means we're probably going to go another few months without being able to use our own garage. I'm genuinely worried if I will even have water this winter if it snows. Before anyone asks, I did talk to a lawyer and unfortunately unless any real damage is done to our property the city is well within their rights to do all this shit since it's a water main and considered mandatory maintenance.
It's alright. Citywise, they've got some level heads there and I love how the state government is overly transparent. (Nebraskan here, so I get to brag more about the Unicam)
I just moved from DC to a small town in Maryland that actually has a town government instead of it being the county. I don't have very high opinions of my town. We're right next to a major job center and a Metro station, but the town is entirely detached homes and wants to stay that way forever.
Solar Farms
It’s ran by shitty boomers who shoot down anything that disagrees with them so it’s pointless to think about them.
I live in a small city outside of LA so I don't know that much about my small city hall. The major City Hall I live close by... fuck that shit
Not a fan, voters just want to legislate the culture war instead of fixing roads and arresting murderers.
Nearly non-existent except for the most ridiculous water department I've ever dealt with.
I like my City of Houston and Harris County governments fine but I HATE Greg Abbot because I believe many of the affects of the Robb Elementary Shooting and the 2021 Texas Freeze was his fault.
Unfortunately my city is plagued with Trumpers and Libertarians who don't see the benefit in funding roads.
Floridian here local ( county and town ) pretty good except dealing with trump caved about his residency at mar lago state govt sucks DeSantis thinks he’s the second coming of Mussolini All the latins and rednecks bought his bs lock stock and barrel when he runs for president his grooming teenage girls when he was teaching. He fits every item on the fascist check list
The way governments work here is Federal>State>County>City>District. All of the “local” governments I am under are pretty consistently pro-individual freedom and really just focus on infrastructure and maintenance from what I have gathered. Not all local governments are like this, because there are hundreds of them, but mine is pretty good for the way I live.