Blog & Whitepapers

I’m just going to let it all out and say that it is a hard life for a 20-something intern. We are anxious, broke, and usually lacking experience. We are struggling to find a balance between the stereotypical ‘party every weekend’, social network-addicted college life and that of a working professional.

A semi-serious take on local government, its shortcomings, and some reasoning behind them. 1) Automatic Call Answering Systems Why we dislike them Automatic Call Answering Systems – The only reason I ever call a government office (or any office, for that matter) is if I can’t find certain information on their website.

Sunday, I watched the Detroit Tigers vs. Texas Rangers baseball game from the stands. Yes, I am still upset about what happened in the 7th inning. Still, attending a summer time ballgame is one of my favorite things to do, even when the mercury flirts with triple digits. I have two unwavering game day traditions:

Not everybody has the wherewithal to urbanize their community into a livable and walkable landscape – but there are other things that can be done to promote Economic Development. Making sure that people researching your area is one that offers the best ROI. It costs almost nothing to do – yet is the starting point for someone who may be looking at your community for relocation consideration.

We’ve recently added the 2012 fiscal data from the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to our database. The results are, well… mixed. According to our rating system, the fiscal indicator score, school districts under a condition of fiscal stress doubled from 6% in 2011 to 12% in 2012. In Michigan, 376 districts had a worse score than the prior year, 56 districts had an improved score, and 114 districts remained the same.

I took up residence at our table, near the back of the room. Flanked by thirty pounds of bagels and cream cheese on my right, a CRM software company on my left – our famous bowl of “Michigan Mints” firmly planted at the front of the table – I settled in for the long haul.

A Tuesday morning meeting can turn into a Tuesday morning nightmare in about three seconds, flat. It started with an innocent mistake – Bob wanted to join a video conference that our Lead Developer, Lami, and I were in. Before he could join, Bob was prompted to activate his Google+ account.

A website can make or break your company. If your company is a website, the stakes are even higher. Recently we published some minor changes to our site. When I say minor, I don’t mean the workload. Changing even a few pages on a site takes hours upon hours of brainstorming, designing, coding,testing, finger-crossing, and implementing.

“Ann Arbor’s two city-run golf courses have lost a combined $2.25million over the past five years, requiring a sizable subsidy from the city’s general fund. The city’s plan to resolve the deficit is to eliminate the golf course enterprise fund at the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year and transfer golf operations to the general fund starting July 1. That means the golf budget will be included as part of the city’s nearly $80 million general fund budget that pays for core services like police and fire protection.” -Ryan Stanton, annarbor.com

Is it realistic to think governments can run like businesses? There are many opinions – some say yes, many say no way! But is there a common ground somewhere in the middle? 1) The Ability to Scale This is perhaps the first thing to debate: how governments and businesses differ in their ability to scale.

Remember dancing to your favorite 45s,cruising to an 8-track tape or popping a cassette into the stereo? Seemslike a long time ago, doesn’t it? That is because these all represent technologies of the past. Even the once-mighty compact disc appearsheaded for extinction. One recent survey indicated more people are now streamingmusic rather than buying it.

It’s all in the numbers and the simpler they are – the easier they are to understand. That is why Munetrix uses a single digit number as a barometer to gauge the financial health – or stress – of local governments and school districts. We use Michigan’s single digit Fiscal Scoring System, augmented by our color-coded highlights.