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As a general term, Municipal government refers to local government operating at the level of a city, town, or village. " Municipalities" consist of a group of people living in a defined area. Usually this will be an urban area, but surrounding rural areas may also be included. In most countries, municipalities of various sorts are special corporations defined under state law, and have specific rights and responsibilities.
A " government" (see also politics) consists of a set of people that have legal power over an area of land and the people that inhabit that land.
In the United States, "Municipal government" is the technical term used to describe local government at the level of the city, town, or village. The remainder of this article gives details of these arrangements.
1 Municipal Government in the United States
In the United States, municipalities such as cities, towns, or villages are the level of local government below that of the county (although many states also have civil townships which are a separate type of government below the county level but distinct from municipalities). Most U.S. municipalities are governed in one of two ways, Council-Manager government and Mayor-Council government.
A partial list of some of the more common rights and responsibilities of a municipality include:
- the ability to require payment of taxes by entities (people and corporations) who own, use, occupy, or legally interact with other entities that own, use, or are legally located within the municipality's geographic boundaries;
- the ability to create debt on behalf of the citizens, who are responsible for repayment of those debts;
- the responsibility to enforce various federal, state, and municipal laws with a police force;
- the responsibility to provide for civil defence and other special needs.
Municipal governments are usually divided into several administrative departments, depending on the size of the municipality. Though municipalities differ in the division of responsibility, the typical arrangement is to have the following departments handle the following roles:
- Urban planning and zoningIn general, zoning is the division of an area into sub-areas, called zones. Land use Zoning is a system of land use regulation which designates the permitted uses of land based on location. One purpose of zoning is to prevent new development from harming:
- Public works: construction and maintenance of all municipality-owned or operated assets, including the water supply systemA water supply system provides water to the locations that need it. This term has several contexts: Municipal water supply system for household and commercial use; Firefighting water supplies; Any water stored for later use. Municipal water supply systems, sewerSewers transport wastewater from building to treatment facilities. Sewers are pipelines that connect buildings to horizontal 'mains', the sewer mains often connect to larger mains, and then to the wastewater treatment site. Vertical pipes, called manholes, streetsThis page is related to transport you may be looking for the 2002 Bollywood movie Road''. A road is a strip of land, smoothed or otherwise prepared to allow easier travel, connecting two or more destinations. In the context of railways, a road is a single, snowColorado's, ( USA) high forests. Snow is precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes. Since it is composed of small rough particles it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unl plowing, street signsMost countries place signs, known as traffic signs or road signs at the side of roads to impart information to motorists and other road users. Since language differences can create barriers to understanding, international signs using symbols in place of w, vehicles, buildings, land, etc.
- Parks and recreation department : (construction and maintenance of) public parks, common areas, parkways, publicly owned lands and so on. Also, operation of various recreation programs and facilities. This department often operates as a regional entity with its own tax authority and governmental structure.
- Police
- Fire department
- Accounting / Finance: collects taxes owed by the municipality, incorporates human resources department for municipal workers,
- Legal: handles all legal matters including writing municipal bonds, verifying the municipality is in compliance with state and federal laws and mandates, and responding to citizen lawsuits where the municipality is a named party. Being named in a lawsuit may mean the municipality is a defendant, plaintiff, jointly with another entity or just by itself. Typical legal actions include: someone falling on publicly-owned sidewalks suing the municipality for negligence in failing to make the sidewalk safe to walk on; a municipality annexing land; etc.
- Transportation (varies widely): If the municipality has a public bus or light rail service, this function may be handled by its own department or it may be folded into another of the above departments.
