Do you trust your local governement?

So what do Local Governments actually do? A lot of people that live in communities dont exactly know what the daily functions of their local governmetns are. Local Governments have many functions that they have to follow everyday. These functions are broken up into categories that are:

Serious Functions- garbage collection, water supply, drainage, recreation and parks

Regulatory Functions- building, enviornmental health, parks, animals, and advertising

Direct Functions- recreation, dog control, economic development, tourism, and street cleaning

Consultative- Planning, roads, water, and conservation

However, there are a lot of questions from the people of whether or not their local government is following, all these functions and helping them. Here is one persons take on how their government works in the form of a cartoon:

As you can see in this political cartoon, the cartoonist shows that the people feel like the government does not listen to their opinions and that people have authority and just trying to benefit themselves. Is it fair for the American people to feel this way? Isn't it the job for the local governments to listen to their people? This is the opinion of a lot of the people all over.

Local governments often have to face problems such as balancing their budgets and states retirement pensions. Even though they have to face these problems, it is their job to tell the people in their community what is going on and situations that are developing. Too many times, local governments have left their citizens in a daze asking what the problem is and how can I face my problem. Clearly the number one problem of local governments is informing their people about every situation. In order to do this there needs to be clear communication between the government and the people. A lot of people dont feel involved with what is going on in their community, and dont know where to go to do something about this, and the governemt does not do anything about this. This is is clearly shown in this cartoon:

In order to change this problem, local governments need to reach out to their people, have more town meetings, and always keep their people in the loop.

Yes, local governments do have a lot of things to worry about, and may not always have time for the people, but they have to show their people that they have thier best interest at the top of their mind. How can people trust their government if they dont even know what it is doing?

Local Governments have many more problems, and continue to explore our blog to see these, and similar opinions to ours on Local Governments.