Municipal services
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What municipal services will be available from any individual municipality will depend on location, history, geography, statutes and tradition.Services may be run directly by a department of the municipality or be sub-contracted to a third party.
Exactly what services are provided by a municipality vary from country to country and even within countries but with a core that may include leisure services, environmental health, public housing, rubbish collection, local roads, education, libraries, main roads, social services, trading standards, car parks and public transport.
However, in some instances municipalities are responsible for providing everything from utilities to fire and police services; Mumbai's even provides a lighthouse service.
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[edit] Funding
Funding for the services it provides again varies with the municipality in question probably most important is in what country the municipality is located. For the UK a combination of local taxation based on property value and central government grants is the main means of funding core service.
This is supplemented by nominal fees for services provided e.g. leisure facilities, for other services a competitive fee is charged compared to commercial concerns but one which allows a profit to be made e.g. carparks. For other services full commercial rates may be charged with for example municipally owned utilities or commercial property. For the most part services will be part subsidised by the municipality e.g.public transport or fully subsidised by the municipality e.g. education.
In recent years UK councils have been given some leeway in finding alternative funding this can be the simple sponsorship of flower baskets, to the trading of surplas buildings and land for services from private firms. In certain notorious cases local councils have used council funds to speculate on the money markets.
Municipalities in other countries may have other methods of funding e.g. local income taxes or even from the profits of utilities or industrial concerns wholly owned by the municipality.
[edit] United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom until their abolishment Municipal Corporations were powerful organisations. In their Victorian heyday with the growth of urbanisation and industrialisation they could be responsible for the promotion, organisation, funding, building and management of everything from housing to water supplies, power in the form of both gas and electricity, to the introduction of electric trams; almost any activity that the city fathers thought was necessary to promote the economic, social and environmental well-being of their municipality.
However to do so special powers needed to be granted through Local Acts in Parliament;e.g. the Manchester Corporation Waterworks Act, needed for the construction of Manchester's reservoirs (see external links below). As times changed the Municipal Corporations continued to try to advance the cause of their municipalities, so for example when in the 1930s aviation was the new technological frontier, municipalities worked to promote themselves with the development of municipal airports.
For the most part UK municipalities lost their in house utilities to the nationalisation and centralisation of public utilities;one notable exception being Kingston upon Hull,which still has a municipally-owned telephone company,Kingston Communications.
One trend in the UK, in the name of efficiency has been the privatisation of departments, the transfer of staff and assets to the new organisation, and the contracting with the new organisation for services to the council. This model has been used for services from road cleaning to social housing, to leisure facilities. Though no council yet seems to dare to do so for more high profile services such as schools and social services.
In the UK fire and police services are not under direct municipal control even when a force can be closely identified with a specific municipal area such as Greater London. However, fire and police services are in part paid for by a surcharge to local taxation, and although they have no say in operational matters local government appoints members to a committee to oversee the running of each force.
[edit] Geography
Where there is a substantial industrial urban population isolated from other conurbations, or when and where the growth in demand is so great that it becomes uneconomic or unpractical for commercial concerns to provide, then the municipalities concerned may assume functions necessary for the growth and functioning of the city.
This was the case in Victorian England and is so today in Mumbai, for example, where the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport are the mammoth municipal organisations that are needed to allow the city to function. The similarly isolated Johannesburg has chosen to run its services as standalone self funding corporate entities.
As a last example, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is a legacy of Los Angeles, finding itself in a similar position of rapid growth, at the beginning of the last century.
[edit] See also
- London's underground and bus services have just returned to local municipal control.
