PARCA Report Highlights Challenges of Municipal Financial Comparison, Examines City Tax Collections
Our 2022 edition of How Alabama Cities Compare (the tenth edition of PARCA’s study of Alabama city finances) introduces a new methodology, highlights the challenges of comparing municipal finances, and proposes a better way to collect the information in a standardized way that should produce comparable data more quickly. After building consensus and adjusting existing […]
Jefferson County Mayors Study Municipal Cooperation on Jails
Taking population into consideration, Jefferson County may have more jails than any other major county in the U.S., and the county’s mayors are investigating options for decreasing the liability, expense, and inefficiency that comes with operating so many separate facilities. As part of ongoing regional cooperation efforts, the Jefferson County Mayors Association commissioned a new […]
Cooperating for the Sake of Self-interest
Any effort to promote cooperation between governments quickly runs into skepticism. Cities and their citizens are self-interested, the thinking goes. They are not going to give up their advantages. They’re not going to be charitable to a neighboring community, just for the sake of being nice. And the skeptics are right. However, that doesn’t foreclose […]
Local Government 3.0
The following feature, which describes an alliance between the City of Montevallo, The University of Montevallo (UM), and Shelby County, marks the launch of an occasional series on creative cooperation between governments and other civic partners. Through the series, we hope to identify, share, and spread best practices and lessons learned. Why We’re Writing This […]
Population Change in Alabama Cities 2018
Huntsville continues its trajectory towards becoming Alabama’s largest city, while Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile continue to drift lower, according to the most recent city population estimates released by The Census Bureau. The two major college towns Auburn and Tuscaloosa continue to grow, as do several cities in Baldwin County. The new estimates cover the time […]
Together We Can – Charting a Course to Cooperation for Greater Birmingham
PARCA’s latest report, commissioned by the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, focuses on the fragmentation of the Birmingham region, the challenges it causes, and potential solutions exemplified by other metro areas around the country. With the clouds of Jefferson County’s bankruptcy lifting and downtown Birmingham showing impressive signs of revival, optimism about the region’s future is high. Considering […]
PARCA compares municipal finances in Alabama, gets mayors’ perspective
How Alabama Cities Finances Compare How Alabama City Finances Compare is the ninth edition of PARCA’s study of Alabama city finances. This report provides basic information on municipal revenues, expenditures, and general fund balances from the most recent year available. The comparisons are in per capita amounts (dollars divided by resident population) so that cities […]