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SECTION VII ADMINISTRATION ROLE OF THE CITY COUNCEL Policy Development - A Sense of Mission: Local officials need to listen to the community as well as help the community visualize where it wants to be in the future. As an elected official, you play a fundamental role in the evolution of the goals, purposes, and direction of your community. You are responsible for making decisions about tax policy and tax rates, the scope of services your government will provide, and the role of the public sector versus that of the private sector in the delivery of those services. You are also responsible for policies that will affect local economic growth, cultural change, and the environment. All these complex and every -changing factors affect and are affected by a local government's mission. To understand your government's mission is to become familiar with its policies. Review the budget, the capital improvement plan, the comprehensive or master plan, administrative procedures and practices, and the charter. As issues come up, take another look at existing policies to see if they support the mission of the organization. Keep in mind that policy making can be passive as well as active. Policy ideas can and do come from many sources, but the final determination of how policies (and through policies the mission of your organization) evolve during your term of office rests with you, the elected governing official. Wherever the ideas come from, it is the Council's responsibility to look at the merits of each idea and then approve, modify, or reject it. Policy Making: In very simple terms, policy making means deciding what you are going to do - not how you are going to do it. An example may help illustrate the difference. Deciding that your community is going to emphasize the provision of low-income housing is a basic policy decision. Making that decision means that you will be spending money on housing programs, that you intend to make this subject a priority, and that, in all likelihood, some other programs will have to wait their turn. Not that making the policy decision says nothing about how you will provide low-income housing. That question comes later and may require advice from your staff or other knowledgeable individuals. Your staff may suggest several alternatives for providing low-income housing. You might be able to use federal programs, state financing, or public -private partnerships. You will have to make other policy decisions, choosing which of these alternatives you wish to use. Once you have made these secondary policy decisions, your staff can deal with how to carry out your policy. Policies are formulated for the broad issues that affect your community. VIE[ - 1 67