My little rural town hired one about 20 years ago and he hired a staff of two. All with degrees in like city planning and government administration. You know an education in like the things you might need to manage a city. It is at this point I should note I live in a small rural town of under 10,000.
We filled out forms for the Obama Reinvestment Act for funding and I have a fiber optics backbone in my town we didn't pay a penny for. Every government building: Post Office/Schools/Library, wired.
A new $60M high school. The 21st best school district in the state.
Oh a billion dollar airport and I am not a burb of St. Louis.
Heck I have a skateboard park.
In my two favorite stories the first is we in an election where we voted for McCain over Obama, did I mention I live in IL, we voted to raise our taxes to build parks. It is kind of hard to go more than a few blocks in any direction and not find a park. Sometimes just a grassy area with a bench to sit. Other times huge and with baseball fields. Paid local artist to create art for said parks.
The second, I get my power through my town. Part of a co-op of other small towns across three states. We were told to continue to get power from them, we needed to upgrade our infrastructure. I would have preferred we bury the lines. But we didn't bitch and moan and say it was too hard. We fucking drove poles into the ground and just rewired things.
I am talking weeks, not months .......
All of this is because of our City Manager. Before my city was in a crappy place. Now we literally can't build houses fast enough.
Heck this lady and her family just moved in around the corner from me. She and her husband are doctors. I was like why did you move from a few communities over?
She was like we wanted what you have. It is kind of nice. I was like isn't it :).
I say all this because of our City Counil meeting last week.
They are pretty boring generally speaking.
Well this "state rights" dude showed up, mad that we were following a law, which I had never heard of before, that sets a rate for base pay for government contractors.
It is staggering to me how much work we do with city employees. But often we bring in outside contractors. One of the staff our city manager was like look dude, I might agree with you on this or that, but there is law. We follow the law.
It got ugly ..… very ugly.
I have all this and my property taxes are the lowest in the district.
My local town government runs a surplus.