PM Magazine, July 2025: Sustainability

SUSTAINABILITY

Nick Valla Assistant Township Manager

Middletown Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA

FEATURES

14

Food (Insecurity) for Thought

In Fresno, California, brownfield redevelopment and local partnerships have generated significant community and climate benefits.

Sarah Sieloff and Lucy Bishop

22

Transformative Outcomes in Local Sustainable Development Through Stakeholder Engagement

Genuine stakeholder engagement fosters a shared responsibility for sustainable development, resulting in empowered communities and improved governance.

Fernando

Ortiz-Moya, PhD

28

Early Adopter Cities Highlight Wins and Lessons Learned in Creating EV Charging Networks

How do you plan an electric vehicle (EV) charging program? Should the community own it or support private operators? Which partners should you prioritize? Which kinds of policies can help expedite charging installations? A recent report helps local leaders answer those questions.

Laila Ale

32 A Declaration of Possibility

In a deeply polarized country, it’s up to local government to help us shift from a mindset of cynicism and division to one of collaboration and openness.

Dave Tebo, ICMA-CM

36

The Public Sector Workforce in 2025: Lots of Moving Parts

Examining the long-term trends and shifts found in MissionSquare Research Institute’s annual workforce survey

Gerald Young

42

Navigating Biases: Practical Decision-Making Strategies for City/County Managers

A new three-part series

Jon Quinday, ICMA-CM

Breaking the Cycle of Contempt

Striving to be stewards of democracy, models of professionalism, and glimmers of hope

BY JULIA D. NOVAK, ICMA-CM

I appreciate the message Dave Tebo shares this month in his article on page 32, “A Declaration of Possibility.”

When something is called a declaration, it clearly signals importance. As we march into America’s 250th anniversary, we need the mindset that Tebo advocates for.

JULIA D. NOVAK, ICMA-CM, is CEO/executive director of ICMA.

One of the most impactful books I’ve read in the last few years was Love Your Neighbor: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt, by Arthur Brooks. Civil politics—characterized by the Thomas Jefferson quote that “a difference in politics should never be permitted to enter into social intercourse, or to disturb its friendships, its charities, or justice”— requires that we approach one another with respect. As our neighbors fall victim to name calling, mean memes, and “othering” that is commonplace in social media, our job gets even more challenging. The political

“Your opportunity, when treated with contempt, is to change at least one heart—yours. You may not be able to control the actions of others, but you can absolutely control your reaction. You can break the cycle of contempt.”

Public Management (PM) (USPS: 449-300) is published monthly by ICMA (the International City/County Management Association) at 777 North Capitol Street. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20002-4201. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, D.C., and at additional mailing offices. The opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ICMA.

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neutrality that we rely upon to do our job— that we are relied upon to maintain while doing our job—gets harder.

I have had a couple of opportunities to speak at state association conferences this year and the message I am sharing is “values, pillars, and polarities.” The values are the four values that underpin democracy. If you haven’t ever heard Dr. John Nalbandian speak about these values, I encourage you to go to goodlocalgovernment.org and listen to his video on values. The four pillars of public administration, adopted by the National Academy of Public Administration, are economy, efficiency, effectiveness, and equity. Executing our work in a way that aligns with the four pillars is our professional obligation. The concept of polarities brings to life the fact that decisions based on values and execution aligned with the four pillars means there will be trade-offs; one value

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Creating and Supporting Thriving Communities

ICMA’s vision is to be the leading association of local government professionals dedicated to creating and supporting thriving communities throughout the world. It does this by working with its more than 13,000 members to identify and speed the adoption of leading local government practices and improve the lives of residents. ICMA offers membership, professional development programs, research, publications, data and information, technical assistance, and training to thousands of city, town, and county chief administrative officers, their staffs, and other organizations throughout the world.

Public Management (PM) aims to inspire innovation, inform decision making, connect leading-edge thinking to everyday challenges, and serve ICMA members and local governments in creating and sustaining thriving communities throughout the world.

PRESIDENT

Tanya Ange*

County Administrator Washington County, Oregon

PRESIDENT-ELECT

Michael Land*

City Manager Coppell, Texas

PAST PRESIDENT

Lon Pluckhahn*

City Manager

Vancouver, Washington

VICE PRESIDENTS

International Region

Colin Beheydt

City Manager Bruges, Belgium

Doug Gilchrist

City Manager

Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada

Lungile Dlamini

Chief Executive Officer

Municipal Council of Manzini, Eswatini

Midwest Region

Michael Sable*

City Manager Maplewood, Minnesota

Jeffrey Weckbach

Township Administrator Colerain Township, Ohio

Cynthia Steinhauser*

Deputy City Administrator Rochester, Minnesota

Mountain Plains Region

Dave Slezickey*

City Manager The Village, Oklahoma

Pamela Davis

Assistant City Manager Boulder, Colorado

Sereniah Breland

City Manager Pflugerville, Texas

Northeast Region

Dennis Enslinger

Deputy City Manager Gaithersburg, Maryland

Steve Bartha*

Town Manager Danvers, Massachusetts

Brandon Ford

Assistant Township Manager

Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania

will be emphasized, one pillar more critical to execution. Abiding by our commitment to remain apolitical creates an opportunity for our work to be seen as the embodiment of professionalism.

As we work to support our members, we are seeing the lens of what people perceive as “political” get broader and broader. People want to sort folks into this camp or that, and your job is to hold all of this and ensure the work of the majority is accomplished. Where is the line between policy and administration?

Values, pillars, polarities, and contempt create an environment where declarations are important. The ICMA Executive Board has been leaning on our foundational documents to ensure that we remain true to who we are.

The ICMA Constitution, the ICMA Code of Ethics, and our own Declaration of Ideals allow us to remain true to our origin as a profession born from reform.

Brooks reminds us of Plato’s admonition in the Republic: “Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction and plurality where unity ought to reign? Or any greater good than the bond of unity? There cannot.” Truly there cannot. We must accept the possibility that we can be what society needs as it falls deeper into this chasm of contempt.

To build on Tebo’s declaration, I will add Brooks’s challenge: “Your opportunity, when treated with contempt, is to change at least one heart—yours. You may not be able to control the actions of others, but you can absolutely control your reaction. You can break the cycle of contempt.”

I believe our members excel at this. Remember that when you are doing this challenging job, you are breaking the cycle of contempt. My hope is that we can all be what our society needs us to be: stewards of democracy, models of professionalism, and glimmers of hope.

Southeast Region

Jorge Gonzalez*

Village Manager

Village of Bal Harbour, Florida

Eric Stuckey

City Administrator Franklin, Tennessee

Chelsea Jackson

Deputy City Manager

Douglasville, Georgia

West Coast Region

Jessi Bon

City Manager

Mercer Island, Washington

Nat Rojanasathira*

Assistant City Manager Monterey, California

Elisa Cox*

Assistant City Manager

Rancho Cucamonga, California

*ICMA-CM

** ICMA Credentialed Manager Candidate

ICMA CEO/ Julia D. Novak, ICMA-CM Executive Director

Managing Director, Lynne Scott lscott@icma.org

Brand Management, Marketing, and Outreach

Senior Managing Editor Kerry Hansen khansen@icma.org

Senior Editor Kathleen Karas kkaras@icma.org

Graphics Manager Delia Jones djones@icma.org

Design & Production picantecreative.com

Helping Local Governments Navigate Large-Scale Solar Development

ICMA’s Solar@Scale project helps local governments - cities, towns, counties, and special districts - prepare for large-scale solar energy development. Visit our resources to learn how your community can improve local planning and regulations

related to large-scale solar projects: icma.org/programs-and-projects/solarscale

GUIDEBOOK

Explore the Solar@Scale Guidebook to learn large-scale solar planning strategies. Developed in partnership with the American Planning Association, the guidebook features eight in-depth modules, exploring important topics like Community Planning for Large-Scale Solar Development and Improving LandUse Decision-Making for Large-Scale Solar Development.

CASE STUDIES

Each case study highlights key drivers, strategies, outcomes, and lessons learned. Read how a land revitalization effort that transformed previously unusable terrain from a coal combustion residual landfill into a functional 100 MW solar project. Check out our library to learn from the experiences of communities around the country.

WEBINARS

Access our growing collection of recorded webinars to hear from national experts and experienced local government practitioners. Our collection includes a 9-part series that mirrors the Solar@ Scale Guidebook as well as special topic webinars.

JOIN US

Join us for our webinar on July 15th! The Developers Roundtable, hosted by ICMA, is an opportunity to engage with large-scale solar developers, learn about the latest trends in utility-scale development, explore best practices for balancing community interests with development goals, and more. Register here:

Confronting Misconduct and Rewriting the Rules

BY LAURA HAGG

A first-time city manager’s struggle with a governing body member’s bad behavior that isn’t covered by the code of conduct.

I remember reading ICMA’s The First Time Administrator’s Handbook before I took the job as city manager of my hometown of Frankfort, Kentucky. Although I had worked in local government previously and had consulted with cities in the United States and in other countries, this was my first time being a city manager.

I recall reading the column, “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” which lists a number of challenging incidents—from elected officials getting arrested to inappropriate sexual conduct—which are true stories of events that occurred in various city administrators’ first year on the job. I think I was a little concerned but also amused. What I did not know then is that I could write and update that column now.

There was nothing about personal conduct, sexual harassment, or targeting of employees.

The state law was also vague and stated that “any elected officer, in case of misconduct, incapacity, or willful neglect in the performance of the duties of his or her office, may be removed from office by a unanimous vote of the members of the legislative body exclusive of any member to be removed ….”

is the director of capacity development and governance at ICMA. She rejoined the ICMA staff in August 2023, having previously worked at ICMA from 2010 to 2015 on international programs to improve service delivery around the world.

Five months into my tenure, a member of the governing body, in a closed-door executive session, was texting his business colleague during an interview for a new police chief. One of the four interviewed was the female assistant police chief. The governing body member was an attorney and was aware that communicating during a closed-door session may constitute misconduct. And he decided to text horrific, sexually explicit and derogatory comments about the female assistant police chief while she was being interviewed.

I won’t go into all the details about the content of the message and how I found out, but the city attorney and I did learn of these texts about three days later, which began a multi-month process of addressing the incident. We had planned on holding an executive session to discuss the hiring of the new police chief; however, we had to quickly change the nature of that executive session so we could share printouts of the texts with the governing body, along with an affidavit by the person who received them.

The remaining governing body members decided to pursue a public hearing on removal, per state law. The city had a code of ethics, but it mainly addressed financial misconduct, filing and investigation of complaints with the city’s board of ethics, and protections for employees reporting wrongdoing.

After many months and many meetings, the remaining governing body members unanimously approved of removing the commissioner from office after a testy and challenging public hearing. He appealed the governing body’s decision to the circuit court, and while the case was pending, he filed baseless ethics complaints with the city against me and the city attorney and numerous other motions in court, which all were easily dismissed.

As additional context, this member and another member of the governing body would often contact city staff about policy and other operational actions. The city attorney and I had several conversations with these two about their conduct and appropriate roles and responsibilities for the governing body, and requested that they not contact staff directly and instead speak to me. The staff interactions would subside a bit and then ramp up as they were looking to score political points.

These two governing body members also did not follow established norms and had used unbecoming language in meetings when people appeared before commission meetings, texted or emailed others often during official meetings, and/or would have frequent sidebar conversations during meetings.

I asked ICMA about codes of ethics and codes of conduct from other communities and ICMA shared several examples. I also conducted my own research to see what other communities did, and none seemed to address the needs and situation we had in Frankfort.

I remember re-reading the ICMA Code of Ethics and in particular, Tenet 3: “Demonstrate by word and action the highest standards of ethical conduct and integrity in all public, professional, and personal relationships in order that the member may merit the trust and respect of the elected and appointed officials, employees, and the public.”

I knew we needed to revise our written policy for our elected officials and staff, especially to reflect changes in

LAURA HAGG

society, technology, and accepted norms. The existing policy was adopted in 1994, and a lot had changed in 30 years. Frankfort is a state capital where partisanship and divisiveness was on the rise, and it was easy to lob personal attacks as the standard way to disagree.

The city attorney and I discussed ideas and began to work on this issue. However, we had to put things aside as we had other more pressing issues to address during this tumultuous time.

Months later, the governing body member who was removed was re-elected, and afterward, the circuit court judge ruled that the city was “arbitrary and capricious” to have removed him. The judge stated that at worst he was being a jerk and at best it was a bad joke. He reinstated his missing pay for the months he was removed from office.

After the election and having spent six more months working with him and the other governing body member, I determined it was best for me to leave the city. After my departure, the city commission continued to have repeated incidents that violated norms and expected standards of conduct. The city attorney continued the work on

addressing this with a renewed sense of urgency. Together with the new city manager, they drafted the “playbook,” a new ordinance governing rules of procedure and decorum for the board of commissioners. Key parts of this playbook include:

• Members shall refrain from abusive conduct, personal charges, or verbal attacks upon the character or motives of other members, officers, employees, board, commissions, committees, the public, or any person or entity appearing before the board of commissioners.

• Members shall respect and adhere to the city manager structure of Frankfort city government as provided in the state law and the city charter. This is a key provision that addresses in greater detail about not making one-on-one contact with any employees on policy matters without notification and involvement of the city manager.

It also goes in-depth about requesting research from staff. If research would require more than an hour of staff time, this effort should be on the commission agenda and responses shared with all governing body members. It also addressed

Frankfort, Kentucky, USA

the conduct of commissioners, including being respectful, as well as refraining from interrupting others or engaging in cross talk.

Additionally, it laid out the rules for the order of business for meetings to ensure a fair process for all and to mitigate the possibility that the meeting would be derailed by a sudden lastminute, unrelated request or demand by a commissioner. It also redressed a weakening of the city manager form of government that was passed in 2019. A previous mayor had advocated and won support for a change to an ordinance that allowed the mayor to set the agenda for city commission meetings, in consultation with the city manager. The new code revised that directive and reverted to the pre-2019 language, stating that the city manager sets the agenda, in consultation with the mayor.

Finally, it addressed the discipline of board members and how they enforce the rules they have adopted.

It has been almost two years since I left the city. And although I had regrets that I did not focus on code of conduct and ethics issues

more, I am grateful and proud of the work that the current city leaders and staff have continued and accomplished.

The new code of conduct and decorum was adopted unanimously on May 19, 2025. With this adoption, the city of Frankfort is working toward ensuring a more ethical and professional approach to serve the best interests of the entire community and to enhance trust among elected leaders, city staff, and community members.

I could not have imagined (or believed it if it was in The First Time Administrator’s Handbook!) that I would have to manage and experience such challenges. Having a good working relationship with the city attorney who shared a similar vision for a more ethical and well-governed community was key to getting the work started and her seeing it through to its successful completion. Frankfort is in a much better place for it. I know because I still choose to live there!

Calendar of Events

ICMA Annual Conference Assistance Scholarships

Application Deadline: July 25

To help ICMA members experience the difference that attending the ICMA Annual Conference has made for so many, ICMA offers the opportunity to apply for a scholarship to support your conference attendance. Apply to one of four scholarship opportunities by July 25!

The Current State of Student Debt and Forgiveness | Savi

July 3 | Free Webinar

ICMA Voluntary Credentialing Program

July 7 | Application Deadline

ICMA 2025 Global Exchange

July 25 | Registration Deadline

ICMA Annual Conference Assistance Scholarships

July 25 | Application Deadline

UPCOMING EVENTS

The Current State of Student Debt and Forgiveness | Savi

August 7 | Free Webinar

Local Government Conference 2025 | Local Government Professionals Australia New South Wales

August 13–14 | Pyrmont, New South Wales, Australia

Experience Puerto Rico

August 17–19 | San Juan and Carolina, Puerto Rico

From Data to Decisions: A Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Webinar Series

August 27–September 10 | Webinar

Gettysburg Leadership Institute

September 10–25 | Application Deadline

September 1

ICMA 2025 Global Exchange

Registration Deadline: July 25

Join ICMA members on the 2025 Global Exchange to Eswatini and South Africa!

This exclusive ICMA members-only annual event promotes global knowledge exchange and networking among local government professionals worldwide and offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity to interact with local government leadership and staff from around the world. This year’s exchange will occur September 3-12, 2025.

For a full listing of events and details, visit icma.org/events. Shop all courses at learning.icma.org.

From Sustainability Policy to Progress

Sustainability is becoming a greater priority in local government, with ACAOs often serving as chief implementation officers, transforming climate policy aspirations into impactful change.

BY NICK VALLA

“We should do this.” This was the message the former chairperson of our governing body sent to our township manager in mid-2020, along with an email thread seeking communities in Pennsylvania to join the Local Climate Action Program.

A year later, our governing body joined a then-small group of municipalities in Pennsylvania to adopt a municipal climate action plan (middletownbucks.org/ cap). The plan assessed local greenhouse gas emission data, outlining a series of short, medium, and long-term goals to reduce emissions over the coming decades and enhance municipal operational sustainability.

Until that point, our sustainability efforts, like those of many municipalities, had consisted of a handful of one-off projects without a clear vision.

In the 3.5 years since the climate action plan was adopted, Middletown Township has celebrated several implementation milestones, chief among them being the installation of Pennsylvania’s first four publicly owned DC-fast (Level 3) electric vehicle (EV) charging stations at our municipal building. In the same time frame, our municipality has received Excellence in Local Government awards from Governor Tom Wolf in 2022 for our climate action plan and from Governor Josh Shapiro in 2024 for our EV charging station installation.

Unlike other service areas, most public administrators lack formal training in environmental science. The learning curve can feel steep. It is made even more daunting when your community—or even a faction of your governing body—is actively opposed to your work.

Take the time to understand the jargon underpinning the projects or policies that your community is pursuing. When in doubt, reach out to colleagues who have done something similar. Chances are, if they cannot provide the answer directly, they can connect you with someone who can.

No Idea Is Too Big

Weeks after our governing body enacted the climate action plan, I attended the 2021 ICMA Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon. On an elevator ride at the hotel, I crossed paths with Peggy Flynn, city manager of Petaluma, California. We each shared stories of recent successes in our communities— my community’s adoption of a climate action plan and her community’s passage of the nation’s first ban on new gas stations.

A key strategy to minimize criticism is to focus on the facts and data relevant to your community.

You’re doing what? Banning gas stations? This seemed unfathomable. Many states would not permit a municipality to pursue such a policy. However, it became clear that the array of sustainable initiatives that communities can pursue is vast.

The implementation of comprehensive sustainability plans and new initiatives is rapidly becoming commonplace in local government, particularly for those in an assistant chief administrative officer (ACAO) role. ACAOs are uniquely positioned—and increasingly called upon—to serve as the chief implementation officers who transform climate policy aspirations into concrete, impactful change.

The Role of the Chief Implementation Officer

ACAOs often find ourselves at the nexus of translating the governing body’s policies or the CAO’s vision into implementing actionable, meaningful change. Particularly in organizations without dedicated staff for sustainability initiatives, ACAOs quickly assume the mantle of CIO— chief implementation officer.

The reaction I had to Peggy in 2021 is the same reaction I receive from some colleagues about our Level 3 EV charging installation. The proximity of our site to major transportation corridors, a shopping center, and diverse residential neighborhoods, as well as grant funding, made our project work for us. While a policy or initiative suitable for one community may not fit another, seize the opportunity to explore how you can adapt successful approaches from other communities to your own context.

Focusing on Facts Amid Controversy

Many of us are drawn to local government because the challenges we address in our communities often diverge significantly from the controversial political subjects found at national or even state levels, allowing us to focus

NICK VALLA is the assistant township manager of Middletown Township, located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA.

on local issues like infrastructure, public safety, and development.

Local governments across the United States have increasingly turned their attention to addressing climate change within their communities, which creates another avenue for national politics to enter municipal council chambers.

A key strategy to minimize criticism is to focus on the facts and data relevant to your community. For example, many communities have experienced more frequent and more severe storms in recent years. What does this look like? There have been 19 recorded tornadoes in our county since 1950; 12 have occurred since 2019. “Hundredyear storms” are now impacting our community every 12 to 18 months.

The question of “Why is this happening?” can be deferred. A more approachable angle to the broader topic of sustainability focuses on the questions of “Is our community prepared for this reality?” and “Is our infrastructure capable of handling this change in demand?”

Sustainability Is not Bound to Climate Change

If your elected body or your community is hesitant to address the topic of climate change, consider reframing

We as public administrators are already hard-wired to foster sustainable operations within our municipalities— the key difference lies in how we frame and communicate our work.

• Evaluating neighborhoods’ proximity to parks and open spaces and identifying underserved areas.

• Identifying opportunities for succession planning in all layers of your organization.

Most people can rally behind the idea of a sustainable local government, especially when focusing on low-hanging fruit that anyone would expect or want from their municipality. The best part? We as public administrators are already hardwired to foster sustainable operations within our municipalities—the key difference lies in how we frame and communicate our work.

and expanding the conversation to sustainability—in every sense of the word. Sustainability in local government can look like:

• Developing a long-term taxation strategy that grows slower than the rate of inflation.

• Crafting an infrastructure maintenance plan that replaces 100% of an asset type by the end of its useful life.

The path to sustainable local government—whether tackling climate change directly or fostering an all-encompassing sustainable operation—is multifaceted and often challenging. Yet, as ACAOs, we are uniquely positioned to serve as the indispensable chief implementation officers. Our ability to translate vision into tangible progress, foster collaboration, and push the bounds of possibility drives our communities toward a more resilient, equitable, and prosperous future for generations to come.

Better Sidewalks Through Creative Problem-solving

Empowering staff to develop innovative solutions to uplift the community, increase efficiency, and save taxpayer dollars.

BY RICK DAVIS, ICMA-CM

RICK DAVIS,

ICMA-CM,

assistant

manager

city

is

of League City, Texas, USA.

He is the author of Elevating Trust in Local Government: The Power of Community-Based Strategic Planning. (rick.davis@ leaguecitytx.gov)

Carlene Neeley is a 78-year-old woman who suffers from peripheral neuropathy. Among other effects, the condition makes it difficult and sometimes dangerous for her to navigate uneven surfaces. She is also an executive assistant in the city manager’s office in League City, Texas, USA, and occasionally walks to work from a small parking lot down an unpaved, rocky path to the sidewalk across from city hall. The experience is often uncomfortable for her.

The path itself sits below several live oak trees—the same kind that adorn League City’s flag—and also runs across their root systems. The city’s arborist has been understandably protective of these symbolic giants and has prescribed a natural pathway, rather than a cement sidewalk, fearing the excavation needed to accommodate traditional cement would harm the trees’ root systems. Meanwhile, beyond Neeley’s use of the path, other employees and residents frequently use the parking lot for special events, elections, meetings, and a variety of other occasions. Many, like Neeley, deal with mobility challenges. So, what’s good for the trees isn’t entirely good for the people.

The live oak has become a de facto symbol for League City, a town adorned with lovely, canopied streets and picturesque tree-lined neighborhoods where just about anyone would want to live. Beyond their beauty, the trees provide shelter from the harsh Texas sun that beats upon this seaside community every summer. However, there’s a downside. The root systems of these beloved trees push the sidewalks skyward, creating tripping hazards that crews spend enormous amounts of time and resources trying to remedy. Last year alone, the city repaired over 26,000 linear feet of sidewalks, many times because of tree roots. As assistant city manager, I oversee public works, and when it comes to sidewalks, it just seems like we’re on a treadmill and can’t catch up sometimes. As quickly as we repair one segment of sidewalk, another just pops up.

Homeowners, meanwhile, confront one of two onerous options—remove the tree or allow the city to reroute the sidewalk closer to their front door. Neither choice, understandably, has been warmly received. No one wants a sidewalk just outside their front door, and detracting from

the ambience and beauty of a neighborhood isn’t really an option either. It’s a no-win scenario.

In 2024, we introduced a program for city staff called Elevate Academy. Elevate’s premise and intention focuses on empowering employees with tools and techniques that allow them to innovate and identify ways to “elevate” how local government functions and delivers services. After just one year, more than 230 employees completed some level of Elevate training. One of those was Patrick Self, a public works supervisor whose responsibilities include, among other things, pedestrian mobility. Acutely aware of the city’s tree-root dilemma, Self discovered an intriguing new product and decided to test it out as part of one of his Elevate assignments.

“It’s a sidewalk made of recycled materials,” said Self. “It looks and feels like sidewalk, except it doesn’t crack, shift, settle, or any of the things we’re dealing with now.”

Self said that among its best features, the sidewalk doesn’t require deep excavation, the usual forms required to hold liquid concrete in place as it dries, or even as much prep work to put into place. However, what interested him the

most was that the product can be placed right over the roots of trees without compromising or injuring them, making both the city arborist and residents happy.

If that wasn’t enough benefit, Self said that Elevate Program calculations determined that the city could save $3,500 of taxpayer money for every tree they don’t have to remove. “We have so many of these tree issues,” said Self. “We could end up saving a lot of taxpayer dollars.”

Our team met with a homeowners association board to discuss piloting this product in their subdivision, and they were very excited to get this on the ground and potentially save their trees. Meanwhile, the city took care of what some are now calling “Carlene’s Pathway.” A beautiful, new walkway now replaces the rocky road that once linked city hall’s annex parking lot to Walker Street. Following the prep work, Self’s crew assembled the 60-foot walkway in 45 minutes. Neeley and others with mobility challenges won’t have to worry anymore about the trek from the parking lot to city hall.

One morning, from the conference room on the second floor of city hall, I spied two residents out for a walk. They approached the new sidewalk and stopped. One bent down to feel the walkway. Both stood for a moment and appeared to discuss it before continuing down Carlene’s Pathway.

I like safe sidewalks, but what I like most is empowering our employees to develop solutions that lift our community and make life better for our residents. I love what happens when they truly believe and realize they can make a difference, and then actually go out and do it!

League City’s plans to address more tree/sidewalk issues and may even consider using this new type of walkway for trail development. You can meet both Carlene Neeley and Pat Self in a video that chronicles the installation of Carlene’s Pathway at youtu.be/7SXuSltlYmU.

The Elevate Academy has meanwhile empowered employees to develop more than 150 innovations in the last 14 months, resulting in more than $2 million in savings and efficiencies.

Food (Insecurity) for Thought

In Fresno, California, brownfield redevelopment and local partnerships have generated significant community and climate benefits.

BY SARAH SIELOFF AND LUCY BISHOP

The U.S. food supply is a study in inefficiency, inequity, and contradictions. Americans waste an estimated 30–40% of the country’s food, and although much of it is safe and edible, that food ends up in landfills as 22–24% of municipal solid waste. There it becomes a potent source of methane, a greenhouse gas with four times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.1 At the same time, one in seven Americans, or 47 million people, including 14 million children, experienced food insecurity in 2023. This marked a 6% increase from 2022, and the highest level recorded since 2014.2

Located in California’s Central Valley, which produces 25% of the nation’s food supply, Fresno County is the third hungriest county in the United States. In Fresno, nonprofits like Fresno Metropolitan Ministry (Metro) help feed hungry people by running just-in-time rescue operations that glean surplus food from institutions and retail outlets.3 It’s an effective strategy, but not a simple one. As Metro’s Executive Director Emogene Nelson describes, “Rescuing food involves more than just picking it up. It requires storage, transportation, timing, and

trust. If one link in the chain breaks, the entire system is disrupted. Behind every pound of food saved is a mountain of invisible labor.”

To streamline and expand their food rescue operations, Metro teamed up with St. Rest Baptist Church (SRBC) to redevelop a vacant and environmentally contaminated former meatpacking warehouse into the St. Rest + Food to Share Hub. The Hub, which opened in May 2024, started with a brownfield—land that is frequently vacant, underutilized, or abandoned, and may be contaminated.4

Metro and SRBC worked with the city of Fresno to leverage multiple federal funding sources that addressed environmental contamination and cleared the way for redevelopment. Their story exemplifies the power of partnerships to build social resilience and contribute to a sense of place, especially in resource-scarce settings.

How a Food Hub Takes Root on a Brownfield

The Hub is located in Southwest Fresno. Known locally as Southwest, it is one of the city’s most underserved,

State and federal grants exist to help catalyze brownfield redevelopment, but success depends on partnerships and local champions.

disinvested, and racially diverse neighborhoods. Southwest is also a food desert, with 47 liquor stores and only one grocery store.

The story of the Hub begins with SRBC. Founded in a Southwest living room in 1944, SRBC had long supported congregation members in need, but in 2010, it began hosting monthly community-wide food distribution events. These were all-hands-on-deck affairs: “My wife Bernice would arrange to buy the food, and I’d bring it back to the church in my pickup truck,” remembers Deacon Ron Wiley. While SRBC’s food distributions eventually expanded to include several 20-foot shipping containers, lack of refrigeration meant that distributions always had to take place the same day as food collection. The system worked, but it lacked flexibility.

SRBC saw an opportunity to fundamentally change its food aid work in 2013, when processing giant Hormel Foods failed to find a buyer for its adjacent 5,852squarefoot former Farmer John meatpacking warehouse.

SRBC approached the company about donating the warehouse and its .4-acre lot. When Hormel agreed, SRBC used technical and financial assistance from EPA Region 9’s Targeted Brownfields Assessment Program to conduct a Phase I environmental site assessment (ESA) in 2013. The ESA identified multiple potential environmental concerns, including an underground storage tank system. SRBC took ownership in 2014, but as Deacon Wiley recalls, “We knew this site was going to need additional work before it could be safe for reuse.”

Around this time, SRBC connected with Metro, a 53-year-old nonprofit with a shared commitment to improving community health and a robust food rescue program called Food to Share.5 Every day, Metro’s five vans circulate through Fresno’s streets, collecting surplus food from schools, institutions, and grocery stores, and delivering it to distribution locations throughout the city. Like red blood cells carrying oxygen, Metro’s vans help keep Fresno’s network of food banks functioning.

But in the world of food rescue, too much of a good thing is a very real possibility. “It’s possible for us to receive 37,000 pounds of lettuce in a single tractor trailer,” says Nelson, “and our five vans can’t move that much product in a single day.” The level of waste in the American food system means that even the most efficient food rescue systems must continually race against the clock. To enhance its operational resilience and meet growing local needs, Metro needed flexible space

to store and refrigerate large quantities of food.

SRBC and Metro had a clear shared need for space with shelving, refrigeration, and room to accommodate both public events and vehicles as large as big rigs. The former Farmer John meatpacking warehouse offered an ideal location, but serious environmental concerns were standing in the way.

A Three-way Partnership Breaks Down Barriers

SRBC and Metro worked methodically to leverage federal funding to address contamination at the former warehouse. From 2014 to 2016, SRBC used EPA Targeted Brownfields Assessments to conduct additional ESAs worth $78,777. These assessments further defined the scope of environmental problems and coincided with the city of Fresno’s 2015 $175,000 EPA brownfields area-wide planning grant, which focused on Southwest. That grant generated a conceptual reuse plan for the former warehouse, which focused on redeveloping the site into a food hub with an adjacent events plaza and green space—all identified as neighborhood priorities in a previous community-driven revitalization plan.6

To expand its capacity to support transformational redevelopment projects, SRBC formed the independent nonprofit St. Rest Community Economic Development Corporation, which teamed with the city, Fresno County, and a local community foundation to secure a $600,000 EPA brownfields assessment grant in 2019.

The USDA estimates that Americans waste between 30–40% of the country’s food supply, which ends up in landfills as 22–24% of municipal solid waste.

“Organizations like St. Rest were actively involved from the beginning, helping to shape the geographic focus and priorities through a community-driven process,” notes David Densley, projects administrator for Fresno’s planning and development department, whose portfolio includes the city’s brownfields program. “Their deep knowledge of Southwest Fresno and the trust they’ve built as a faith-based organization made them an invaluable partner.”

That 2019 grant supported $32,627 in additional environmental assessment to close data gaps in August 2021. By December, SRBC had a cleanup plan in hand— supported by an additional $10,092 of grant funding—that paved the way to removing asbestos-containing materials and mold in the former warehouse walls and ceiling.

In 2020, the city applied again for EPA brownfields funding, this time securing $800,000 to establish a brownfields revolving loan fund

(RLF), which kickstarted cleanup at the former warehouse. From March to June 2022, a $191,000 grant from the RLF supported the removal of one underground storage tank, plus mold and asbestos-containing materials in the warehouse’s walls and ceiling. In total, EPA and the city supplied $1,403,991 in brownfields funding to support environmental assessment and cleanup. With the cleanup complete, Metro and SRBC initiated a fundraising sprint to raise the $4.3 million necessary to build the Hub in the newly remediated space. “We aggressively braided funding because our goal was always to leave St. Rest with a debt-free asset,” says Metro’s Nelson, even after the global pandemic increased construction costs by 72% to $7.4 million. Construction funding came from over 25 partners, including federal and state grants and private donors ranging from foundations to a local construction company.

Ultimately, the St. Rest + Food to Share Hub is a story about partnership. Metro and SRBC’s strategic coordination with the city and EPA leveraged brownfields funding and technical assistance to address environmental contamination and lower barriers to redevelopment. It’s a recipe that allowed Metro and SRBC to stay focused on meeting fundraising goals and making construction happen to get the project into operation and delivering community benefits.

Generating TripleBottom-Line Results Today, the St. Rest + Food to Share Hub provides

triple-bottom-line benefits to Southwest and the larger Fresno community. Home to the redeveloped warehouse and a two-story building with kitchen, office and meeting space, the Hub has allowed SRBC to expand its food distributions from one to three per month, each serving around 200 people.

At each distribution, Metro offers on-site cooking demonstrations using ingredients that are available that day. It also offers six-week long, no-cost nutrition and cooking classes that provide hands-on instruction in healthy food preparation, demand for which has been sufficient to keep classes running almost

continuously. “We want to help people learn to incorporate healthy foods into their meals and diets, while shopping affordably for their families,” reports Metro Program Manager Erika Lopez, who organizes the classes. Students report that they use these classes to inform their personal choices and to help educate others. “That is our ultimate goal: creating a community that helps each other grow in education, health, and access to nutritious food,” she says.

As part of its commitment to community health, Metro also invites aspiring food entrepreneurs to attend its classes, and via the Hub, provides access to commercial

kitchen space to prepare and wash produce and meet food handling safety requirements. “We want to help local entrepreneurs prepare healthier versions of what they are already selling to the community,” says Nelson.

Finally, the Hub makes significant contributions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. The St. Rest + Food to Share Hub increased Metro’s food distribution capacity from 3.8 million pounds in 2023 to 4.1 million pounds in 2024, despite operating for only seven months that year. That food supported 1.2 million acts of charitable distribution and keeping it out of landfills prevented the release of an estimated 13.9 million pounds of methane, equivalent to the annual emissions of 40,000 households.

For Nelson, the Hub is critical physical and social infrastructure that is as much about feeding people as it is about providing a sense of

belonging. “To see families come to the Hub, whether for food distribution or for a cooking class, and leave nourished, you know it’s not just about food, but also about engaging, connection, and hope. It is a powerful reminder of what’s possible when collaboration, partnership, and grassroots action come together. It’s more than a building; it’s a movement for health, justice, and equity in our community.”

The St. Rest + Food to Share Hub represents a formidable achievement, but the work of Metro, SRBC, and the city of Fresno is far from complete. SRBC remains focused on expanding service offerings at the Hub and developing an adjacent soccer field and festival plaza. Deacon Wiley and his wife Bernice routinely survey food distribution participants. “We ask if they have suggestions for how we can improve our level of service, and we’re really receptive to feedback,” he reports. For example,

participants have identified a need for medical care, which SRBC could potentially offer in the Hub’s flexible meeting space on food distribution days. “We’re trying to figure out what the needs are,” says Deacon Wiley. “That’s what the church is there for: to improve the quality of life in the community. That’s what we do.”

Brownfield redevelopment is ultimately about possibility and a commitment to a better future for people and their environment—on community terms. When Metro received its own EPA brownfields community-wide assessment grant in 2023, it began partnering with the city to mutually leverage brownfields resources. The two continue to actively work together, building on the success of the St. Rest + Food to Share Hub to support the redevelopment of other brownfields sites for use as housing, grocery stores, and community gardens. Land reuse is never easy, but few transformative processes are,

and partnerships can make the difference. Advises Densley, “Listen early, partner early, and stay committed through complexity. Brownfields truly can make a win-win possible for your community and your partners.”

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/ news/blog/food-waste-and-its-linksgreenhouse-gases-and-climate-change

2 https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/ files/_laserfiche/publications/109896/ ERR-337.pdf?v=30853

3 https://www.fresnometmin.org/fresnofood-security-network-page

4 https://www.epa.gov/brownfields

5 https://www.fresnometmin.org/foodto-share-page

6 https://www.fresno.gov/wp-content/ uploads/2023/03/Elm-AvenueRevitalization-Strategy.pdf

SARAH SIELOFF is an urban planner and funding strategist at Haley and Aldrich.

LUCY BISHOP is an environmental project planner at Haley and Aldrich.

Transformative Outcomes in Local Sustainable Development Through Stakeholder Engagement

Genuine stakeholder engagement fosters a shared responsibility for sustainable development, resulting in empowered communities and improved governance.

BY FERNANDO ORTIZ-MOYA, PhD

In my work supporting sustainable development across Asian cities, one phrase comes up again and again: stakeholder engagement.

Stakeholder engagement sits at the center of nearly every debate on sustainable development. This oftenvague phrase—which begs the questions, who are these stakeholders exactly, what form of engagement is sought after, and what does engagement actually build—is meant

to ensure that people and communities shape the policies affecting them, leading to more inclusive, effective, and lasting outcomes. Yet, it is increasingly treated as a procedural requirement with limited impact.

What if participation wasn’t a box to tick, but a shift in the way cities, their leaders, and their residents relate to one another?

Santa Rosa City in the Philippines and Shimokawa Town in Japan offer two very

different, yet complementary, ways of engaging residents to co-create sustainable development solutions to local problems. Santa Rosa is a fastgrowing city on the outskirts of Metro Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Shimokawa is a small town navigating depopulation in the far north of Hokkaido, Japan. Differences aside, both are discovering that what matters most isn’t the size of the budget or the number of workshops. It’s trust—and the patient work of building it.

Stakeholder Engagement: With Whom and for What?

Stakeholder engagement transforms sustainable urban development by empowering communities to work alongside local officials in shaping the policies that affect them.

Stakeholder engagement actively involves people, groups, or organizations who have a stake (an interest or concern) in the development and implementation of a policy,

project, or decision. This can take many forms. Engagement usually includes identifying stakeholders (who has a stake?), informing them about the initiative, and creating ways for them to voice their views and shape the outcome.

Champions of stakeholder engagement argue that it leads to better decisions and more sustainable outcomes. Stakeholders bring diverse perspectives and local knowledge that help identify pressing problems, build consensus, and co-create solutions. When people feel heard by local leaders, they are more likely to trust both outcome of policies and the institutions behind them.

Stakeholder engagement also strengthens accountability, as officials must explain their decisions and consider external input.

This leads to the question: who is actually being engaged? The term stakeholder signals a more inclusive form of government. It refers to all

Photos: Shimokawa Town and the City Government of Santa Rosa.

What if participation wasn’t a box to tick, but a shift in the way cities, their leaders, and their residents relate to one another?

investors, government agencies, or neighboring jurisdictions.

more vocal or well-organized interest groups.

those with a stake in a decision or policy, oftentimes extending beyond local residents. In sustainable development, stakeholders may include neighborhood groups, private companies, nonprofits, vulnerable or minority populations, academia, and external actors such as

This diverse group, gathered under the umbrella of stakeholder, reaches beyond terms like citizen or resident, highlighting the many people, communities, and actors that have a legitimate interest in local sustainable development. This inclusivity is critical when tackling complex challenges— like climate action, housing, or urban planning—that cut across different sectors and communities. One of the biggest challenges is identifying who to engage with and how to reach those who are often left out. As a rule of thumb, outreach should prioritize traditionally marginalised and hard-to-reach populations, people who may feel disconnected from local government and whose voices are rarely heard compared to

Done well, stakeholder engagement is transformative. Done poorly, it turns performative, another box in the policymaking checklist.

The Dangers of “Tick-Box” Stakeholder Engagement

Not all stakeholder engagement processes are created equal. Poorly planned processes come with familiar pitfalls that can quickly erode trust. I won’t try to list them all, but some show up too often to ignore.

One of the biggest risks is reducing engagement to a tick-box exercise: one done quickly to satisfy a legal requirement. These processes are often superficial—limited to a public meeting or generic survey—and miss the critical insights emerging from carefully

listening to the community. The lack of interest always shows. People can tell when a consultation is merely a token formality, damaging trust in local officials.

Tick-box engagement also happens when authorities give no real influence to participants. When involvement is performative—when decisions are already made and input is ignored—the result is cynicism and mistrust. Reducing participation to a performance loses the deeper value of civic relationships.

Another common pitfall is failing to close the loop. In such cases, local authorities don’t report back on how input was used. Stakeholders are left wondering: did any of this matter? Poor communication discourages future participation: no one wants to feel ignored. And this

isn’t limited to token efforts; it even happens in well-meaning processes. Local leaders need to build communication channels to share what was heard, how it shaped decisions, and clearly articulate why certain suggestions were or weren’t adopted.

Sometimes, engagement begins with big promises but ends in disappointment. Managing expectations from the start is essential. People need to understand how decisions will be made and what influence they’ll actually have. If they believe they don’t hold real power—when their role is merely consultative—they may feel misled. Transparency about the level of influence helps prevent disillusionment when final decisions don’t reflect everyone’s input.

Santa Rosa and Shimokawa reimagined engagement: less about box-ticking and more about building trust.

Santa Rosa City, Listening as Practice

The city of Santa Rosa is located in the province of

Laguna, Philippines, some 40 kilometers south of Manila, the national capital. The city is a major industrial hub that anchors much of the country’s automotive manufacturing sector, hosting factories of companies like Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.

Its economic vitality and proximity to Manila have accelerated population growth

in recent years, adding layers of complexity to sustainable development planning. Santa Rosa had a population of over 400,000 people in 2020, more than double its population two decades earlier. The city is subdivided into 18 barangays, a local government unit in the Philippines with publicly elected barangay captains and councils, as well as their own budget.

Under the leadership of Mayor Arlene Arcillas, Santa Rosa’s sustainable development efforts have been framed around three pillars: peoplecentered, looking after people’s development concerns; resource-based, as the city is aware of the need for resources to implement projects and programs; and inclusive, so nobody is left behind as the city progresses. These three pillars are woven into the city’s development plans—including the comprehensive land use plan, the comprehensive development plan, and the smart city roadmap, among others—anchoring policymaking in sustainable development principles.

The Philippines requires local governments to engage with civil society organizations (CSOs), setting up a minimum threshold for CSO inclusion in certain specialized bodies. In line with this, Santa Rosa has a CSO plan to formalize its engagement and meet national requirements. Yet, Mayor Arcillas believes in

deeper engagement and listening to people’s needs, going beyond the minimum requirements to reach out to more people, especially marginalised groups. Yet deeper listening soon surfaced unexpected challenges.

During some of the city’s workshops with civil society groups, local officials realized that sometimes participants requested programs that already existed. This came as a revelation. The problem wasn’t lack of action. It was a lack of effective communication.

People were not aware of what the city was doing for them because the information hadn’t reached them in ways they could easily access.

For city officials, this became a turning point. It was a reminder that local action means little if people could not see or understand it. From that moment, the city began investing more in transparency, creating clearer communication channels and incorporating awareness building into the policy process itself.

Ever since this realization, Santa Rosa’s planning office doubled down on transparency. Currently major planning documents are publicly available on the city’s website, allowing residents to access these materials directly. This small but meaningful shift highlights how engagement isn’t confined to workshops. It continues in the open visibility of policy itself.

Stakeholder engagement has also sparked the development of new initiatives. For instance, the community gardens program of Santa Rosa emerged during barangay consultations. This program supports local farmers while simultaneously creating communal green spaces and boosting local food production. What began as a community-led proposal has since grown into a city-supported initiative: the number of gardens and community farms more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, rising from 14 to 29. These gardens are not only increasing local

sustainable food production but, more importantly, they strengthen social cohesion and civic participation.

More recently, the city has completed its first voluntary local review process—a form of sustainability reporting based on the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs)—that required extensive engagement with stakeholders. The city conducted several online outreach campaigns and surveys to hear from its residents on their most pressing needs. Yet, aware that not everybody has internet access, Santa Rosa included more traditional modes of stakeholder engagement, including faceto-face interviews, in-person workshops, and focus group discussions to ensure that the voices of as many people as possible were heard.

Throughout this process, residents were hesitant at first, but grew more receptive and willing to participate as the city continued reaching out to

them. Seeing tangible changes stemming from engagement processes—and even the implementation of new projects—helped to build trust with the city’s administration. But trust wasn’t one-sided. City officials also learned to trust residents. They went beyond merely listening to their needs and began to cocreate solutions. Stakeholder engagement proved transformative, becoming a hallmark of the city’s approach to sustainable development.

Shimokawa Town: Slow Consensus, Deep Ownership

Shimokawa is a small town in the northernmost tip of Hokkaido, Japan. Situated in a largely forested and rural area, it is relatively isolated; Sapporo, the prefectural capital, lies around 140 kilometers south. Its development during the first half of the twentieth century was supported by forestry, mining, and agricultural industries. But in recent decades, the decline of

its traditional industries has led to depopulation and an aging society. By 2025, less than 3,000 people called Shimokawa home—a sharp drop from its 1960 peak of 15,555—with a staggering 40% of inhabitants age 65 or older.

Facing these challenges, Shimokawa chose an unconventional path. Instead of attracting new economic sectors, local authorities bet on leveraging traditional forestry to sustainably support its economy and community well-being. To achieve this, Shimokawa leaned on its stakeholders to chart how to move forward.

Shimokawa’s journey spans over two decades. Since the early 2000s, the town envisioned a sustainable society that pays equal attention to the social, economic, and environmental aspects of development. This philosophy led in 2007 to the Shimokawa Town’s basic autonomy

ordinance—its highestlevel municipal law—which institutionalizes sustainability, resident-led governance, and integrated policymaking as cornerstones of Shimokawa’s subsequent approach to development.

Shortly after, the town joined national programs promoting local sustainability, being designated as an environmental model city (2008) and as an environmental future city (2011). These initiatives allowed Shimokawa to experiment with innovative solutions to its challenges. Over the years, Shimokawa gained insights into the challenges faced by small towns in advancing sustainability. This knowledge enabled the town to contribute when the national government when developed the municipal SDG guidelines, published in 2016.

Despite these achievements, residents felt somewhat disengaged from the work

developed under national programs. Public sentiment was that participation in these initiatives was top-down and government-led. Although the benefits were clear, demand grew for a more resident-driven, participatory approach.

The town found itself at a crossroads. The environmental future city plan was scheduled to conclude in 2016, while the fifth Shimokawa comprehensive plan—the highest-level, all-encompassing policy framework for Japan’s local governments, which sets the vision and strategic development direction—was due for revision in 2018. It seemed like the perfect time to co-create a plan to guide the city’s future.

Shimokawa revisited its mid- and long-term aspirations, inviting residents to envision what an ideal Shimokawa would look like in 2030. The result was the “Shimokawa Challenge: Connecting People

and Nature with the Future,” a local reconceptualization of the SDGs. Moving forward, the community embraced this clear roadmap to a future they co-created.

Shimokawa strategically engaged stakeholders. Rather than engaging with everybody from the get-go, the town established the Shimokawa SDGs Promotion Citizen’s Council with key community figures. These individuals spearheaded engagement and the development of the Shimokawa Vision for 2030, voluntarily facilitating dialogues and collecting feedback from residents. Additional channels ensured all residents could voice their concerns to increase involvement.

This process empowered stakeholders to co-create solutions. When formulating the town’s vision, community members highlighted “children’s future” as a top priority. This became one of the goals in the

Shimokawa Vision, leading to the launch of the communitybased educating vision,” a co-education project including members of the council to realize this objective.

In developing the Shimokawa Vision for 2030, the local government prioritized two key aspects: back-casting and a residentdriven approach, ensuring that residents remained central to shaping the town’s future. This communityformulated vision was integrated into Shimokawa’s new comprehensive plan, embedding the 2030 Vision so that all municipal departments aligned their work toward its goals.

Shimokawa continues to refine its stakeholder engagement process. Although significant efforts have been made to reach diverse groups, local officials aim to expand participation even further, particularly among those

not yet engaged. In this process, the SDGs provided a common language, drawing in stakeholders who usually stay away from government processes. With the SDGs as a foundation, Shimokawa started conversations across sectors and groups, enabling collective action toward a more sustainable community.

What Engagement Really Builds

Stakeholder engagement is not merely a tick-box exercise or a technical process: it’s a relationship. And as in every relationship, trust is essential. Santa Rosa and Shimokawa have learned that treating engagement not as an obligation but as a process for

co-creating solutions leads to transformative outcomes. In both cases, trust became not only a precondition but also a result of sustainable governance. Importantly, it worked both ways: local governments learned to listen more openly, and people felt that their voices matter. Santa Rosa and Shimokawa went beyond holding meetings; they listened, adjusted, and followed through.

Sustainable development transcended the policy sphere as communities engaged in decision-making and came to share responsibility for achieving the co-created goals. This is what we talk about when we talk about stakeholder engagement.

ORTIZMOYA, PhD, is a chief policy researcher at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan.

FERNANDO

Marianne Campolongo -

Early Adopter Cities Highlight Wins and Lessons Learned in Creating EV Charging Networks

How do you plan an electric vehicle (EV) charging program?

Should the community own it or support private operators? Which partners should you prioritize? Which kinds of policies can help expedite charging installations? A recent report helps local leaders answer those questions.

EV charging is new territory for many cities and counties, who are learning along with utilities, local property owners, and local businesses who can help build out a city or regional charging network. As new EVs become more affordable and the used EV market grows, cities and counties will play a central role in making buying an EV a viable option for their residents. To do so, cities and counties will need to work across sectors to develop a reliable publicly available charging network that conveniently serves all residents.

Eight early adopter cities— Ann Arbor, Austin, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Oslo, and Portland, Oregon—share their experiences in “Lessons from Leading EV Charging Cities,” a report offering guidance for communities that are beginning to formulate their EV programs, as well as advice for those operationalizing their programs.1 These lessons were distilled from an

“Don’t wait until your plan is 100% before installing chargers. Have goals identified, but parallel to that, build the infrastructure.”

—City of Denver, Colorado, USA

in-person workshop with the eight cities organized by Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and Taubman Center for State and Local Government, as well as MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

The eight early adopter cities identified four key program considerations: planning, policy, partner coordination, and funding and investments. While each community is unique, adapting these focus areas to fit your circumstances will help launch and scale a charging program. Every

section ends with a set of questions to help guide your team’s thinking in regard to your own community. I am pleased to share some key wins and lessons learned from each program category in the report.

Planning: Set Goals, but Don’t Wait to Have an Approved Plan

Key Win

Clear, transparent, and measurable goals help residents, businesses, charging companies, utilities, and other stakeholders understand

Whether you begin with a formal plan or

the scope and objectives of your program and identify how to support your efforts where possible. Early adopter cities strongly suggested setting operational goals and milestones that are both city and resident focused, whether your city/county begins with a formal EV plan or not. For example, your

Shift your focus to program evaluation and

Coordination and partnership are key—coordinate early and often with essential

Evaluate your policy framework to see where changes could accelerate installation of EV charging, public or private.

Explore new partnerships, cement effective partnerships, and continuously improve coordination efforts.

Re-evaluate city/county policies to maximize program participation, from installers to private partners to users. Funding and

Determine the funding mix necessary to maintain and expand your program.

Figure 1. Key Takeaways

town might target having a publicly available charger within a 10-minute walk of every resident’s home, as well as an overarching number of chargers, such as installing 500 chargers within two years.

Lesson Learned

Make your EV program evidence-based by prioritizing data collection—both the system to store the data and the staff to manage and analyze the data. Early adopter cities indicated they wished they had spent more time setting up infrastructure to capture detailed data including EV station usage, individual charging sessions, and uptime. This is particularly important for cities/counties that partially or fully contract out charging services. In your procurement process, be explicit in outlining what data will be sent to the city/county, how, in what format, and with what frequency. Define

penalties for noncompliance or incomplete data. Some leading cities also added an option to their existing 311 systems or a form on their public websites to enable residents to easily report charger outages.

Policy: Evaluate Policies that Can Help Accelerate Charging Installation

Key Win

In one-third of early adopter cities, most publicly available chargers are on private property like malls and apartment buildings. Cities/ counties can aid these private efforts by removing zoning and code impediments, as well as allocating staff to promptly review permits, assess grid capacity, and otherwise support private charging installation. Your city/county can also lower hurdles by producing a guide

“‘Right to charge’ is a home rule law in Boston that protects property owners from being prohibited or unreasonably restricted by associations from installing charging stations in or near parking spaces dedicated for their use, making it easier to own an EV.”

—City of Boston, Massachusetts, USA

to installing EV charging for businesses and residents. Every participating city made policy changes to support their charging efforts. Most commonly these changes dealt with code, zoning, and permitting rules.

Lesson Learned

Work with current and new private partners to understand if waivers or code revisions have encouraged installation and continue to identify ways that the city/county can ease installation costs and concerns. Hosting an annual meeting that brings both public and private partners together to celebrate and fine tune the program can help city planners and policy revisions. Though cities/counties can

install in many places, chargers on private property play an important part in your city or regional network.

Partnerships: Connect Early with Your Local Utility

Key Win

Collaboration between the city and utility on EVs is essential. Understanding electricity needs for the transportation sector is a new area for both parties. Both can work together to co-develop locations and coordinate on a longer-term roadmap that integrates planned power upgrades with potential charging locations that may need additional power capacity (e.g., the utility

may be planning to upgrade, bury, or replace power lines in preferred charging locations). This can help avoid conflicts between city and utility efforts (e.g., the city creating a bike lane on a street with a utilityinstalled EV charger).

Lesson Learned

Many leading cities said they should have done more community engagement at the beginning of their programs. Partnering with valued neighborhood champions and organizations can help spread the word about the new charging program to reach more residents. Residents can also participate and offer feedback in the location selection process, keeping them invested in the program’s progress.

Funding and Investments:

The City Does Not Have to Fund It All

Key Win

Early adopter cities considered multiple program models for cost recovery, such as contracting out the entire program due to lack of internal

“Our goal is that everyone in NYC is within a 2.5-mile drive of a DCFC. We know we will need private sector support to achieve it.”

—City of New York, New York, USA

expertise, funding through special bonds or specific fees, or a mix of several models. If your program is functional, you should have actual charger costs versus initial estimates to gauge how well the program is operating. If your city/county is not sure about committing to a new program, consider advocating for a pilot to see how residents respond to build support for a permanent EV charger program. If your utility is leading the effort, it has access to different funding streams.

Lesson Learned

The program launch likely focused on getting chargers online with maintenance receiving less attention. However, chargers will

only encourage residents to purchase or transition to EVs if those chargers are reliably working—which means being prepared to identify and repair broken chargers quickly. Ensure operations and maintenance funding is available—whether the program is operated by the city/county or contracted out—to build resident confidence that chargers will be available when they need them.

Final Thoughts

A consistent theme among these early adopter cities was that the availability of EV charging is critical to enabling EV adoption. Public charging makes owning an EV possible for your residents who cannot

“In 2006, we started the deployment of curbside chargers (L1 and later L2) that were free and took a financial loss. In 2019, we included a modest user payment, and most chargers are now paid back in three to five years. We want high utilization at all locations, topping 30% on 24-hour publicly available chargers.”

—City of Oslo, Norway

charge at home, including those who live in multi-family buildings, park on the street, and/or rent their home.

Every city/county has many tools to facilitate investment in charging, from directly investing in chargers, to facilitating private investment, to using building codes to encourage investment at multi-family residences and workplaces. To learn more about how these cities approached and adapted their EV charging programs, access the full report at salatainstitute.harvard.edu/ lessons-from-leadingev-charging-cities.

ENDNOTE

1 https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/ lessons-from-leading-ev-charging-cities/

LAILA ALE is an affiliated researcher with the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. She is a co-author of the “Lessons for Leading EV Charging Cities” report, along with Elaine Buckberg, senior fellow at the Salata Institute; and Kathryn Carlson, executive director for the Rappaport Institute at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government. If your city needs research and data support for charging programs, please reach out to the Salata Institute at salatainstitute. harvard.edu/contact-us/.

A Declaration of Possibility

In a deeply

polarized country,

it’s up to local government to help us shift from a mindset of cynicism and division to one of collaboration and openness.

In 1776, a small group of men initiated the possibility of a new nation and future for a group of 13 divided colonies with a Declaration of Independence.

Today, as we in the United States celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Independence Day, I would suggest that we as local government managers and residents in a deeply polarized country join together in a declaration of possibility, calling for the future transformation of community relationships in our municipalities and metro areas. This need for a declaration of possibility came to me during a recent re-read

of Peter Block’s exceptional 2018 book, Community: The Structure of Belonging (2nd ed.), and many of the ideas in this article are based on Block’s book.

Obviously, the original Declaration of Independence was written by and for white, male landowners, but it included certain foundational truths that allowed our country to “grow into” a land that could embrace all of its residents. It was the fundamental commitment to self-evident truths that helped us as a country grow into a prosperous future. All are created equal, endowed with certain unalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness— and to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Just as the founders found it necessary to declare independence from an oppressive form of government, it seems today that we need to declare independence from an oppressive mindset of cynicism, fear, retribution, and blame that has infected our community and national conversations. I suggest that our statement of independence and freedom take the form of a Declaration of Possibility for a positive future that our communities can live and grow into, defined by collaborative, open, and trusting relationships; an acceptance of different ways of thinking; and a willingness to go beyond political party lines when seeking solutions. What might be some of the key elements in our declaration of possibility if

BY DAVE TEBO, ICMA-CM (RETIRED)

we hope to create our desired future? Again, with Block’s help, I would suggest that we as local government managers, together with our elected officials and residents:

• Understand the seriousness and urgency of our declaration of possibility as much more than simple optimism but a passionate public choice to take accountability for our divided communities and bring a renewed sense of hopefulness, tolerance, and acceptance into our community relationships and dialogue.

• Recognize that our communities are built by stories of success and undermined by constantly finding fault. If we dwell too much on fear, anger, and blame, we will be building that reality as our future.

• Not allow cynics to paint our efforts to see positive possibilities as only marginal, cute, or naïve, but struggle every day to shift the current divisive narrative with “possibility conversations” in our communities, asking the question, “what can we create together?”

• Are keenly aware that our declaration of possibility may not reflect the current reality, but see this proclamation as a first step toward community transformation that can drive us toward a new future as we allow it to grow and resonate within our communities.

We realize, especially as local government managers making this declaration of possibility, our great influence over how our community might shift the narrative toward conversations of possibility and belonging away from conversations that divide and denigrate. Block reminds us of some of our greatest challenges, which many of us are brutally aware of: How can we improve the ways that people come together in public meetings? How do we ensure our meeting spaces serve as welcoming venues for residents? How do we find creative ways for public meetings to avoid getting caught up in an endless cycle of people sharing opinions, positions, arguments, and explanations without really hearing each other or answering the important core questions for which the meeting was organized? How can we do a better job of framing our debates

and conflicts? Are we using powerful questions or just defending a position? Are we creating the conditions for a sense of belonging in our residents? Are we able to deemphasize our leadership role in order to value the quality of ideas that each resident brings to the table? When necessary, can we recognize when it is important for us to serve more as a convenor or social architect—one who has the capacity to invite new solutions into the world? Are we able to design gathering experiences that provide an example of what our desired community future might look like?

Are we able to recognize that a critical task of our leadership is to protect space for dissent, disagreement, and expressions of doubt from residents? Authentic and sincere dissent can be life-giving and open new ways of looking at issues and seeking solutions.

Are we willing to pursue the possibility of shifting the current narrative to a strong resident approach? Are we emphasizing community gifts, generosity, abundance, social fabric, accountability, associational life, and resident engagement? Are we constantly looking for new ways to get residents involved in the community as participants not just spectators, co-creators of solutions, and producers rather than only consumers of public services?

Do we understand the importance of defining community in its broadest sense? Are we consistently building partnerships and planning projects with other

community stakeholders— like nonprofits, schools, service organizations, churches, and the business community—to ensure a healthy ecosystem of open and trusting relationships?

To Move Forward, Remember What Success Looks Like

In order to move forward from our declaration of possibility, transform our community conversations, and maintain our ecosystem of relationships, I suggest we look back at the community rebuilding successes that many of our older metro areas have had in restoring their economic balance following the loss of a major manufacturing industry in the early 2000s.

After leaving work as a full-time administrator in 2018, and having a little more time for reading about local government issues, I noticed the appearance of a group of strongly researched books, all declaring the same message: the road to the future goes through the community and metro area.

There are three books from this period that I highly recommend:

• The Smartest Places on Earth: Why Rustbelts Are the Emerging Hotspots of Global Innovation by Antoine Van Agtmael and Fred Bakker.

• Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman.

• The New Localism by Bruce Katz and Jeremy Nowak. Bruce Katz went so far as to state in his PM article from February 2018, “Power is drifting downward from the nation-state to metropolitan areas; horizontally from

governments to networks of public, private, and civic actors. This power shift is driving a governing philosophy I call the New Localism.”

Despite the federal government’s current trends to slow financial support for communities and metro areas, I believe the underlying foundation of local relationships in our nation’s communities and metro areas can allow us to prosper in the future if we take the right steps now.

Katz and Nowak in The New Localism gleaned seven key lessons we might learn from both large and small metro areas that have successfully created their own economic transformations in the last couple of decades:

1. Strengthen collaboration across universities, community colleges, workers, companies, entrepreneurs, and investors.

2. Success requires radical ambition that is forward looking: to be on the ground floor of new innovative technologies that can reshape nations, markets, and lives.

3. Successful revival reflects the fortitude of investors focused on the long term.

4. Public and philanthropic investments must be part of a broader political, business, civic, and university alliance.

5. An entrepreneurial culture is crucial to success.

6. Build on, rather than discard, the historical legacy of the region.

7. Make innovations visible to the world through placemaking and connection to innovations that are

taking place in the labs, companies, and universities of the region.

Van Agtmael and Bakker emphasized the role of the “connector” in all the communities they researched that had built their own version of a “brain belt” after economic stagnation. “At last, when it becomes clear that no solution is going to appear from out of the blue, a connector resolves to take matters into his or her own hands, and when that happens, people are ready to respond. The connector brings people together— politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, executives—to identify strengths and resources, find common ground, and collectively set ambitious goals.”

Friedman observes, “More and more it is becoming clear the basic architecture of a resilient and prosperous twenty-first century must be a network of healthy communities.” In his opinion, all healthy communities have created complex, collaborative, and adaptive coalitions based on trust to help foster resilience and propulsion for their residents.

What’s Next After Our Declaration of Possibility

So based on our past collective experience and economic successes at the metro level that we’ve discussed, what might be some of the urgent and necessary community building responses needed from us as local government managers today following our declaration of possibility:

1. Commit to being connectors with a radical

ambition to create our unique community. Be the leaders who have the ability to work courageously across sectors to bring people together for the sake of a common cause. Success will only come through consistently developing relationships of openness and trust.

2. Start small and work hard at changing what you have the power to impact. I am in agreement with Peter Block that the small group and small community will be the energizing power and source of authentic change for our democratic republic, where decisions must be made face to face, not by executive order. Small communities can be units of transformation. Each time we enter a room or a meeting, the possibility for something new to emerge enters with us.

In my 32 years of local government management, I have never served in a municipality over 15,000 in population. I think this may be the reality for many local managers. It is interesting to note the Wisconsin Department of Administration website (doa.wi.gov) lists population estimates for approximately 1,852 towns, cities, and villages, making the average population size for a state of almost six million about 3,200 per community. Only 62 communities in the state are estimated to have populations over 15,000—or only about 3.4% of the total number of municipalities.

3. Change can occur organically. My small community may be only one of 20 in a metro area of

Another Quick Example of What Success Can Look Like

I would like to mention a historical example from my hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, of how cross-sector connection, collaboration, and innovation possibly changed the economic course of the Fox Cities, Wisconsin region and beyond.

In 1929, 20 of the local papermaking mills joined together to help found and fund the Institute of Paper Chemistry at Lawrence University. The paper companies realized the importance and need for new talent, and despite being competitors, jointly invested in a high-level graduate program to supply the area with well-educated paper chemists. The many patents and innovations that emerged from the institute between 1940 and 1990, supporting the development of new paper products (think Kimberly-Clark), validated the difficult 1929 investment and ensured that the Fox Cities papermakers would be at the cutting edge of their market’s technologies.

The fortitude and long-term vision of these home-grown paper companies can be appreciated even more when you think about what was going on in the world in 1929: The Great Depression began mid-year and the Wall Street Crash occurred in October 1929. Not the best time for a large-scale investment in a graduate program, but still the institute survived and prospered at Lawrence until moving south in the late 1980s.

300,000 but we can attempt to influence our entire region by supporting “conversations of possibility.” We are in constant relationships with neighboring municipalities dealing with economic development, public safety, regional planning, utility sharing, joint infrastructure development, etc. It is not too far-fetched to imagine how impactful a focus on possibilities, cooperation,

sharing, and collaboration might be in such an interconnected metro area. Keep planting seeds of possibility no matter the size of your community!

DAVE TEBO, ICMA-CM, (RETIRED) is an associate with Public Administration Associates, LLC.

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The Public Sector Workforce in 2025: Lots of Moving Parts

Examining the long-term trends and shifts found in MissionSquare Research Institute’s annual workforce survey

BY GERALD YOUNG

Recruiting and retaining talented employees to work in the public sector has been a challenge in both strong and struggling economies. So, what’s going on in 2025?

According to the latest workforce data from MissionSquare Research Institute, the hiring difficulties of the past few years have lessened considerably, although they have not gone away.

The institute’s annual workforce survey, conducted in collaboration with the Public Sector HR Association and the National Association of State Personnel Executives, has polled human resources

managers since 2009. This article focuses on some of the longer-term trends related to talent management.

Recruitment Challenges

Hard-to-fill positions have been a focus of the survey since its inception. From 2012 to 2014, only information technology and engineering positions saw even a tenth of respondents indicate they were a challenge. Those difficulties grew to impact more governments and more positions through 2020, ballooned with the onset of the pandemic, and have declined since 2022. (See Figure 1.)

As of 2025, only engineering positions are considered hard to fill by more than 70% of respondents.

Figure 1.

Of 8 key positions, how many were identified as hard to fill by the identified percentages of respondents

Figure 1 reflects data for information technology, engineering, police, dispatch, maintenance work, finance, and building permitting and inspections. Data for corrections and nursing was excluded as it was not available in all years.

But just because recruitment is easier now does not mean that it is easy. This is illustrated by the fact that many of those positions receive fewer qualified applicants than they have vacant positions available to fill. While this metric also shows signs of improvement, IT and maintenance positions have fewer than half of respondents saying that they are not receiving enough qualified candidates.

Compensation

Factors that may be contributing to this improvement include the waning of the pandemic and the Great Resignation. In addition, inflation over the past few years coincided with a decreased perception that public sector wages were competitive. (See Figure 3, 2022).

Percentage of positions with fewer qualified applicants this past year compared to the number of positions available

Engineers Police officers

Registered nurses

Corrections officers

Information technology employees

Maintenance workers

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

From 2023 to 2025, it was common for governments to conduct compensation and classification studies and then to offer broadbased pay increases. And permanent salary adjustments aside, about a third of respondents across those three years indicated that they were offering targeted hiring bonuses.

The attention to such compensation issues can be seen in both lines in Figure 3 trending upward after 2022.

Retirements

The labor supply is also worth considering, and several trends are overlapping here. As noted, the Great Resignation has waned, with the quit rate among state and local government employees reaching a 20-

year high in 2021through 2022 and since returning to pre-pandemic levels.1

At the same time, the Baby Boom generation has hit “peak 65,” which means a large segment of the workforce has reached retirement age. And considering that the state and local workforce has a higher median age than the workforce as a whole,2 the coming loss of talent looms large. In fact, 46% of survey takers anticipate the largest number of anticipated retirements will hit their organizations in the next few years.

Federal Workers

For those looking to respond to this silver tsunami of retirees with a silver bullet fix, it is tempting to see that in the number of federal workers who have either been displaced by

recent layoffs and incentivized resignations, or who are just looking to explore other options. In fact, there is evidence that those federal workers are open to that path, with Work for America finding that 52% are interested in applying to state or local government as a means of continuing their careers in public service.3

However, interest does not necessarily translate into a convenient fit. Geography will play a role. Although many federal workers are already based outside the Washington area, they may not be located close to where jobs are available or be willing to move to smaller or rural locations even within their current states of residence. Their skill sets and specializations also may not align with the

vacancies available, though they are more likely to align for positions in IT or finance. Likewise, agents in the Federal Bureau of Investigation might see opportunities with larger state or local policing agencies. For others, there may be more of a mismatch, such as moving from a focus on national-scale crime interdiction to patrol and investigations in small to mid-sized communities.

In addition, the federal departments impacted (e.g., U.S. Agency for International Development, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Science Foundation) may not be the prime source of job candidates for jurisdictions struggling to fill vacancies among public safety dispatchers, public health

nurses, corrections officers, or building inspectors.

The data so far reflect this. With the workforce survey taking place from March 4 to April 7, 2025, very few local governments (0.3%) indicated that outreach to federal workers was among their successful recruitment strategies. This was much more common among state governments (11%). As the long-term impacts of federal job cuts are felt through the remainder of 2025 and beyond, it is expected that the 2026 survey will reflect an increasing emphasis on such recruiting.

Other Workforce Issues

Of course, changes to the labor market have not been limited to compensation or federal employment. Among the other high profile issues impacting recruitment and retention are skill-based recruiting, flexible work practices, and policy and practice around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Skill-based Recruiting

Related to the compensation and classification studies that have been conducted has been a reconsideration of college degree or other requirements for various positions. This may be due to the changing nature of the jobs or to alternate pathways that exist for candidates to acquire relevant experience.

For the past three years, at least 40% reported that they had updated job specifications for minimum education, skills, or licensing. This may be a method of lowering barriers to applications— and 72% indicated that they have seen an increase in applications following such

changes—but it may also be paired with efforts to put in place either pre-employment skills assessment tools (reported by 9%), programs to upskill new employees after they have been hired (18%), or internships or apprenticeships across a wide range of positions (18%). Apprenticeships were most commonly cited among utilities staff, but were also reported in skilled trades, information technology, and other fields.

Figure 4.

Flexible Work Practices

“Return to the office” has been a mantra around large corporations as well as some metro areas and state governments. Exclusively remote work has declined since its peak in 2021, but it remains one part of the overall staffing landscape, with 13% offering that to some share of their eligible employees. (See Figure 4.)

What seems to have replaced it is hybrid staffing, which declined slightly

Flexible Work Practices for Eligible Positions

from its 2024 peak but is currently in place in 54% of organizations, often with shared in-office days for optimal collaboration opportunities (a practice followed by 61% of those with a hybrid schedule). Despite the churn among full-time remote and hybrid work, flexible schedules and hours remain as common as they were back in 2016, and the percentage with no flexible work arrangements continues to hover around 20%.

Flexible schedule (e.g., 4 days, 10 hours)

Regular hybrid scheduling

Flexible work hours (e.g., around rush hour, personal appointments) No flex work practices are offered Regular full-time remote work

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

One subject on which there is amazing diversity is the range of definitions ascribed to DEI. This article will not add one more definition to that ongoing dialogue but will share what the data shows. As an organizational priority, the importance of DEI to state and local governments has decreased. From 2021 through 2023, the survey asked about DEI as part of a list of potential priorities, asking that they be identified as important, somewhat important, or not important. In the wake of social justice movements in 2020, DEI was identified as important by 64% of local governments. That total declined to 56% by 2023. (See Figure 5.)

In 2024, the question was reformatted to ask only about “very important” priorities. As a result, while the 40% ranking workforce DEI as “very important” in 2024 should not be compared to the figures in 2021–2023, there was a clear decline from 2024 to 2025

A large segment of the workforce has reached retirement age, and considering that the state and local workforce has a higher median age than the workforce as a whole, the coming loss of talent looms large.

(down to 27% identified as “very important”).

That does not mean, however, that there is less diversity in the workforce. In fact, diversity appears to have increased, as seen in Figure 6. As with the improvements in recruitment environment, there may have been multiple factors that contributed to this change. For instance:

• The difficulty in recruiting may have spurred new or expanded outreach.

• Staff who had been hired at a time when the local labor market was less diverse may have resigned or retired during the

pandemic years, and new job seekers hired since that time may have been more likely to reflect current community demographics.

• Policies intended to limit potential bias (e.g., using diverse interview panels and redacting names from initial application review, reported in 2024 by 43% and 23% of local governments), may have led to consideration of more qualified, diverse applicants.

In the current policy environment, many governments may be reevaluating the structure of

their workforce DEI programs. But if the goal is to attract a pool of qualified applicants that is as wide as possible and to retain those already in the organization, then fairness and engagement will continue to be priorities, and whether as an explicit goal or as a byproduct, diversity will likely follow.

Conclusion

Just because recruitment challenges have abated somewhat does not mean that uncertainty around all these moving parts impacting workforce planning will go away. Employers can stand

Figure 5. Local Government Only: Importance of Workforce DEI

Figure 6. Local Government Only: Is the composition of the workforce reflective of the community?

Key Takeaways

What does this mean for local government managers?

• Recruitment challenges have eased, but a retirement wave is still looming. If your organization does not have a succession planning process in place, it should adopt one now.

• Federal workers and younger workforce entrants prioritize public service. And yet, very few state and local governments build their recruitment campaigns around the ability to contribute to the community. Appeals to what motivates job candidates may reap better results than simply advertising a vacancy.

• Flexible workplace policies are not one-size-fits-all. Experimentation ranges from hybrid arrangements to alternate start times to shorter work weeks. Encourage departments to find what works best for their staff.

• Diversity takes many forms. Aside from welcoming people to your organization regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender, also consider how opportunities can be opened up to those who come to the workforce with skills acquired through alternate pathways, with neurodiverse backgrounds, with the capacity to be upskilled after hiring, or who may be working to re-enter the workforce after a prior incarceration or adjudication.

ready to address these issues organizationally and within individual departments. And as these laboratories of democracy continue to generate interesting ideas and approaches, those solutions will percolate throughout associations like ICMA.

For more detail around each of these topics—as well as issues like employee engagement, exit interviews, gig hiring, health and retirement benefits, and paid family leave—see the full report on the 2025 State and Local Government Workforce Survey,4 as well as the institute’s recent report, “Artificial Intelligence in the Workforce: A Survey of State and Local Employees.”5

ENDNOTES AND RESOURCES

1 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS Survey, https://data.bls.gov/PDQWeb/jt.

2 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https:// www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat18b.htm.

Employed Persons by Detailed Industry and Age: The median age of those employed in public administration is 44.9, compared to the overall workforce median of 42.2.

3 “Ready To Serve: What’s Next for 6,000+ Federal Workers,” CivicMatch, 2025, https://static1.squarespace.com/ static/66b0fc58892f23228b19cbed/t/ 6802b6ed86e15269c1977 ef6/1745008383081/CivicMatchSurveyReport.

4 https://research.missionsq.org/content/ media/document/2025/5/2025_State_ Local_Workforce_Report.pdf

5 https://research.missionsq.org/ content/media/document/2025/5/ Artificial_Intelligence_StateLocal%20 Employees.pdf

GERALD YOUNG is a senior researcher at MissionSquare Research Institute (research.missionsq.org).

Navigating Biases: Practical Decision-Making Strategies for

City/County Managers

BY JON QUINDAY, ICMA-CM

A new three-part series

City/county managers operate at the intersection of leadership, governance, and public service, where their decisions impact the lives of countless residents, businesses, and stakeholders. However, decision-making is rarely straightforward.

Cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and mental shortcuts can cloud judgment, undermine public trust, and complicate governance. This three-part series, “Navigating Biases: Practical DecisionMaking Strategies for City/ County Managers,” delves into these challenges while offering actionable insights to help managers lead effectively in an increasingly complex environment.

Through this three-part series, readers will gain a deeper understanding of how these psychological tendencies influence decision-making and learn strategies to mitigate their effects. Each installment builds upon the last, comprehensively exploring city managers’ tools and approaches to navigate challenges and uphold accountability, transparency, and public trust.

This first article explores the evolving role of city managers over the past century, emphasizing how the role has evolved from technical oversight to strategic leadership and community engagement. It introduces the central theme of cognitive biases, heuristics, and logical fallacies, setting the stage for deeper exploration in subsequent sections.

The second article examines specific cognitive biases and heuristics, such as confirmation bias, anchoring, and the framing effect. Real-world examples illustrate their impact on municipal decision-making, offering practical insights into how city/county managers can recognize and address these challenges.

The final article focuses on logical fallacies and inferential heuristics, presenting actionable strategies for city/ county managers to improve decision-making processes. Managers can mitigate flawed reasoning and build resilient, inclusive communities by fostering critical thinking, engaging diverse perspectives, and implementing evidence-based practices.

Whether managing a community of 5,000 or 500,000, the insights from this series will help local government leaders deliver high-quality services, make sound decisions, and foster lasting trust within their communities.

The Evolving Role of City Managers and Cognitive Challenges

Local government management is no longer just about technical administration but about leadership, accountability, and navigating increasingly complex decision-making landscapes. Over the past century, the role of city/county managers has transformed, requiring a shift from operational oversight to strategic leadership and community engagement. This evolution has placed managers at the forefront of fostering collaboration, promoting inclusivity, and guiding policy decisions that

align with the diverse needs of their communities.

At the core of this challenge is the need to recognize and address cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and heuristics that can distort decision-making. These mental shortcuts can lead to flawed reasoning, eroding public trust and reducing the effectiveness of governance. Smaller municipalities, where managers juggle multiple roles, often face amplified risks of decision-making errors. However, by embracing critical thinking, evidence-based practices, and transparent communication, managers can overcome these challenges and deliver high-quality services.

Over the past century, the role of city/county managers has evolved significantly, transitioning from technical administrators focused on dayto-day operations to key leaders deeply involved in policy formation and community engagement. Initially, managers were seen as responsible for managing the routine functions of a city or county with minimal involvement in policymaking. However, as their role expanded, managers began advising elected officials on policy decisions solidified in local ordinances.1 This shift positioned them as organizational leaders. In recent decades, their responsibilities have evolved to actively engage the public in decision-making processes and prioritize community relations, reflecting a broader commitment to inclusive governance.

Regardless of the size of the community, managers now play a pivotal role as community builders, promoting collaboration and guiding decision-making

amidst diverse and sometimes conflicting interests. The 2012 ICMA State of the Profession survey highlighted that most city managers prioritize providing information, hearing input, and obtaining feedback from residents, reinforcing the shift toward more participatory governance.2

As city/county managers’ roles have evolved to encompass strategic leadership and community engagement, their decision-making challenges have grown more complex. Cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and heuristics often operate unnoticed, yet their impact on governance can be profound. Next month, in part two of the series, we will explore specific biases and heuristics—such as confirmation bias, anchoring, and the framing effect—and examine their influence on local government decision-making through real-world examples. Understanding these cognitive tendencies is the first step toward mitigating their effects and enhancing the quality of governance.

ENDNOTES

1 Kleeman, L. (Ed.). (2018, March 29). Article 3. City Manager. Code of the City of Russell, Kansas. https:// russellcity.citycode.net/index. html#!articleCityManager

2 International City/County Management Association. (2013, July 19). ICMA survey research: 2012 state of the Profession Survey Results. https://icma. org/documents/icma-survey-research2012-state-profession-survey-results

JON QUINDAY, ICMA-CM, is interim city manager of Abilene, Kansas, USA.

Celebrating Parks and Recreation

BY ALISON RHODES

We’ve long known what research now confirms: public parks and recreation make our communities thrive. Here in Boulder, Colorado, USA, we have an incredible network of parks, facilities, and programs that make our community healthier, more connected, and more sustainable every day.

But here’s something else that’s just as important: our parks and recreation system is also a powerful driver of workplace well-being—supporting employees’ health, balance, and success. As a working mom, I know that being a part of this field has been key to my success—both personally and professionally.

ALISON RHODES is director of Boulder Parks and Recreation, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Each July, communities across the country come together to celebrate Parks and Recreation Month. This year, I invite you to reflect on how your local system doesn’t just improve neighborhoods, it uplifts lives. It builds stronger teams, supports working parents, and creates pathways for women in leadership—who still represent a small share of local government administrators.

Here are just a few powerful ways parks and rec is shaping a brighter future for all of us.

Affordable Childcare

Childcare can be one of the biggest barriers to workforce participation. Our neighbors in the town of Erie are meeting that challenge head-on, making sure employees can access popular summer camps. When kids have safe, enriching places to go, working moms (and all parents!) can show up fully at work.

Workplace Flexibility

Our parks and rec facilities are open more than a hundred hours each week, providing a lot of opportunities for meeting both business and family needs. I’ll never forget my early years at the North Boulder Recreation Center. Starting work at noon on Wednesdays so I could take my kids to pre-school gymnastics at my own recreation center was magic.

Mental Health Support

Green spaces are powerful for mental health. Research shows that time in nature reduces stress, anxiety, and depression—something every working parent can appreciate. In Boulder, our well-being culture includes walking breaks in the community garden next to my office, often with a teammate! As ICMA keynote speaker Dan Pink reminded us, even a few minutes outside can make a huge difference. Why not turn a team meeting into a walking meeting?

Physical Health Opportunities

In celebrating Parks and Recreation Month, I invite you to reflect on how your local system doesn’t just improve neighborhoods, it uplifts lives.

Recreation programs aren’t just for residents, they’re for us, too. Offering employees access to classes, facility passes, or lunchtime workouts builds health and strengthens team bonds. I still remember kickboxing with coworkers in my early days with the city of Boulder. Last fall, several of us trained for a half marathon thanks to a local race partnership. Commiserating over the training and challenging race course connected us in a special way.

This summer, I hope you join us in celebrating what makes public parks and recreation so special—not just the green spaces and fun programs but also the people behind them. Cheers to the teammates that keep our parks safe and beautiful, to the teams creating safe and joyful places for kids, and to the leaders championing wellness in every corner of our communities. Here’s to Parks and Recreation Month, where work and wellness come together under the sun!

The Road to Becoming an ICMA Senior Advisor

After receiving support from senior advisors throughout my career, I knew I wanted to give back to others in the same way when I retired.

BY A. J. WILSON

I have served city managers in California as a senior advisor for over 20 years. For nearly all those years, I have worked with the ICMA staff and the program coordinator of the League of California Cities as a volunteer to coordinate the program. I have done so because of the importance of the senior advisors who have had an impact on me throughout my career.

My career in local government began in 1968 when I had the pleasure of an interview with Charles Henry, city manager of University City, Missouri, who would go on to become a senior advisor. University City was one of the first cities in the nation to accept the responsibility to racially integrate in a positive fashion. I had just returned to the St. Louis area from New Haven, Connecticut, after four years of study at Yale University graduate school. While I was working on my

degree, I lived in the Dixwell neighborhood, the historically African American urban center in New Haven. I became active with the organizations that were vital to finding a way to improve life for the residents of the neighborhood. University City was an inner belt suburban city which itself was undergoing rapid racial integration. It was introducing new laws and operational programs and ordinances intended to create a welcoming community. It sought to overcome the impacts of redlining on housing financing, exclusion of minorities in rental housing, and frequent community unrest. I was hired to address these challenges, and the goal was to create a successful interracial community.

After a few years, and with Charles Henry’s support and encouragement, I accepted the position of executive assistant to the mayor of St. Louis. From there, I moved to the position of city manager of Portland, Maine; then city manager of Santa Ana, California; and finally, city manager of Kansas City, Missouri.

While serving as city manager of Santa Ana, I had the pleasure of working with Joe Baker, the manager of a neighboring city in Orange County. Joe retired before I left Santa Ana and became a range rider, which was the original name for what today we call senior advisors.

Looking back, I probably should have avoided the unfortunate determination that the Kansas City political structure was not ready for the changes I sought to implement. But after I decided to

A. J. WILSON is lead ICMA senior advisor in California.

continued on page 48 ⪼

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resign my position in Kansas City, who was almost the first to contact me but range rider Joe Baker. Not much later, I also got a call from range rider Charles Henry. We were fortunate to have overwhelming support from the residents of Kansas City, so we decided to remain living there for the next two years.

When my family expressed interest in returning to California, I called Joe Baker, and he agreed to assist me. He even arranged for us to temporarily reside in a nearby vacation condominium that he and his wife owned while we searched for a new home.

After returning to California, I was offered the position of city manager in Pomona, California, and began a very positive period of management for 15 months. Then came an election and one of the supportive councilmembers was defeated and a new councilmember elected.

A month later, the council scheduled a confidential evaluation of me, and I expected it to be a positive experience. When we went into the closed session, there were some positive reflections on my work. But then a surprise! A very difficult councilmember opened a file folder and handed me a letter. It was a letter of termination addressed to the chief of police awaiting my signature. I was told I could remain as manager if I executed the letter. If not, I would be terminated myself. As you might expect, the next morning a press release was circulated that I had been terminated as city manager by a 3–2 vote of the council.

That evening, I met with my family to make sure my wife and children understood what had occurred. As we talked, the phone rang. And guess who it was: range rider Joe Baker. Once again, he offered his support. We made arrangements to meet for lunch the next day.

While I was able to return to the role in public management training I had established after leaving Kansas City, I still wanted to remain a city manager. I became the interim city manager for the city of Norco, California, and then was offered the position of executive director of the Western Riverside Council of Governments. While I was professionally established once again, I never forgot the support of Joe Baker. I decided that when I retired, I would explore opportunities to give back to my community of managers through the Range Rider/Senior Advisor Program.

Ironically, as I was ready to retire, Joe Baker called me again to say he was going to vacate the range rider position and wondered if I would consider being his replacement in California. Within weeks, I accepted the challenge, and I have served as a range rider/senior advisor for over 20 years. I have had the pleasure of being a source of support for managers and have continually worked with my colleagues to elevate the quality of resources that are available for managers before and after they face a crisis in their career.

There are some important lessons I learned in this professional journey that I would like to share with you.

1. If you are starting your career, find an experienced city/ county manager who would be willing to coach you in the beginning. Ask your senior advisor to help you find someone if you don’t already have someone in mind.

2. If you have issues arise in your position that you did not expect, use your senior advisor as a sounding board to determine your next steps. I refused to sign the letter of dismissal of the chief of police and resigned. Later, after talking it over with Joe Baker, it became clear that I could and should have simply left the executive session and given the proposed letter of termination to the press. He suggested that the two councilmembers who joined in to support the termination might have changed their minds before causing my resignation.

3. Always remember to consider how your family supports you and include them, not only in your good days, but also in the difficult days. Our first instinct may be to shield our family from our professional difficulties, but sharing with them may also open a path to stronger connections with our partners and children. Your senior advisor can assist you as needed, including sitting down with you and your family.

4. Today, there are occasions when there are actual threats to the manager and sometimes even their families. If you need assistance, call your senior advisor! They will work with you to define your response and plan a way forward.

5. In the future, you may consider a management position in a city that you don’t know much about. Search firms will offer information, but always remember that they are the agents of the city offering employment. A senior advisor can assist you in finding answers to any questions you may have, which might not be information the city wants you to discover. There are a wide variety of resource materials that can be made available to you. ICMA, your state League of Cities, local foundations and universities, and your local city managers’ chapter can be of help. Ask your senior advisor to guide you to the right place to get what you need.

Consider Becoming a Senior Advisor

If you are retired or planning your retirement, serving as a senior advisor can offer you the opportunity to contribute valuable insights to a new generation of managers and public officials. We may know little about AI resources, the latest generation of computer programs, or the bells and whistles of Zoom meetings, but we have spent years understanding what the public wants, negotiating conflicts between elected officials, and developing collaborative skills that can make a difference. If you are interested in learning more about the program, visit icma.org/ icma-senior-advisor-program.

LEADERSHIP BOOKSHELF

You can rely on these ICMA publications to guide and inform your leadership and learning.

Future-Proofing Local Government Essays on Innovation

ICMA LOCAL GOVERNMENT

REIMAGINED INITIATIVE

A collection of essays written by local government practitioners, academics, and industry professionals that inspire readers to consider the future of local government, innovative approaches to common challenges, and impacts on service delivery. 2025.

FREE Digital Download

Managing Local Government Services: The Challenge of Change (4th Edition)

BY KIMBERLY L. NELSON AND CARL W. STENBERG

This revised edition provides an overview of practices and strategies for effective service delivery in a complex and at times chaotic environment, along with additional resources. 2024.

ICMA Member Price: $65.95

Non-Member Price: $89.95

The Effective Local Government Manager (4th Edition)

EDITED BY ROBERT E. (BOB) LEE DPA, ICMA-CM AND MICHAEL ABELS, DPA, ICMA-CM

Learn how to navigate dynamic, complex 21st Century forces: helping elected officials provide effective leadership, building a bridge between the community and local government, helping the community design its future, leveraging resources, and promoting quality service delivery. 2023.

ICMA Member Price: $65.95

Non-Member Price: $89.95

ICMA is the leading publisher of books, reports, survey research, training materials, and other resources used by local government management professionals, municipal and county associations, and colleges and universities. These and other ICMA print and digital publications and data sets can be purchased at bookstore.icma.org

Tax

Increment

Financing: A Practical Guide for Analyzing TIF Risks, Benefits, and Outcomes

BY JOHN KOVARI AND JOSEPH E. GROMAKI

A practical approach to analyzing TIF projects with a step-by-step guide and real-world case studies that help readers unpack and decipher the complexities of TIF. With your purchase comes several downloadable digital excel files allowing you to use this resource to its fullest potential! 2024.

Available in print and digital.

ICMA Member Price: $55.95

Non-Member Price: $65.95

Managing Local Government: Cases in Effectiveness (2nd Edition)

EDITED BY ROBERT BLAIR AND KIMBERLY L. NELSON

Features 27 real-world scenarios tackling today’s most pressing local government issues. 2025. Available in print and digital.

ICMA Member Price: $55.95

Non-Member Price: $65.95

Effective Supervisory Practices (6th Edition)

EDITED BY MICHELLE POCHÉ FLAHERTY

Boost your leadership skills, gain a thorough understanding of your role as a manager/ supervisor, and increase your productivity through quality management and more effective teamwork. (To learn more about ICMA’s companion training series, contact jlamphear@ icma.org.) 2023. Available in print and digital.

ICMA Member Price: $55.95

Non-Member Price: $65.95

Last year, GFOA’s Jobs Board was viewed more than 200,000 times. When you post your carefully crafted job ad, you ’ re putting it in front of an engaged and highly qualified audience eager to take the next step in their careers. Submit your ad today!

Budgeting is one of the most important responsibilities that local government managers undertake every year. The new book, A Budgeting Guide for Local Government, Fourth Edition, provides new tools and methodologies to produce effective budgets that yield the desired results.

Learn more at icma.org/budgetingguide.

ICMA CAREER GUIDES

ICMA’s Career Guides are local government professional toolkits to help you thrive, from finding a position to succeeding as a first-time manager, or how to break into the profession from another field, and preparing the next generation through internships and Fellowships. icma.org/careerguides

THRIVE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT 2025 COACHING PROGRAM

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17

New Job Overnight: How to Make the Successful Transition

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15

Mastering Your Growth: Proactive Career Development Strategies

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19

Trends Transforming the Workforce: What You Can’t Afford to Overlook

All Webinars start at 1:30pm Eastern time. Miss a webinar? Watch it anytime! Register and watch digital recordings from your ICMA Learning Lab Dashboard.

Don’t miss out on these FREE 2025 coaching webinars.

REGISTER TODAY!

Additional free coaching resources at ICMA Coaching:

• Access digital recordings on ICMA’s Learning Lab

• Career Compass monthly advice column

• CoachConnect for one-to-one coach matching

• Live speed coaching events, talent development resources, and more. Join our list for coaching program updates and more. Email coaching@icma.org.