Metropolitan Board of Works

“ A board of public works, board of park commissioners, board of fire and water commissioners, a board of civil service, a city counsellor, a city auditor, a city assessor, a purchasing agent, and subordinate officers, are appointed by the mayor, without confirmation by the common council. A non-partisan board composed of citizens who must not be physicians has general control of the city’s hospitals and health department. ”

“ By this plan the voters elect a small council, or board of directors, who in turn appoint a MANAGER who serves as a superintendent over the affairs of the city or town. He is a trained specialist, often an engineer, and cities and towns sometimes search the country over for the best man available for the place. The manager appoints the heads of the various departments of government, such as health, police, public works, etc., and is responsible to the council for their work. It is the application to town government of methods long used by successful business corporations. ”

“ It appears from the charter that, in the execution of the power to make local improvements and assess the cost upon the property specially benefited, the main steps to be taken by the city authorities are plainly marked and separated: 1. The board of public works must transmit to the city council a resolution ordering the work to be done and the form of an ordinance authorizing it and creating an assessment district. ”

“ A municipal corporation may act through its mayor, though its common council, or its legislative department by whatever name called, its superintendent of streets, commissioner of highways, or board of public works, provided the act is within the province committed to its charge. Nor can it in principle be of the slightest consequence by what means these several officers are placed in their position,-whether they are elected by the people of the municipality, or appointed by the President or a governor. The people are the recognized source of all authority, state and municipal ”

“ Finance — comptroller, treasurer, and a board of estimate composed of the mayor, comptroller, corporation counsel, president of the common council, city engineer, and treasurer; Public Works — commissioner, who appoints superintendents of water works and parks, city engineer; and a board of contract and supply, composed of the mayor, comptroller, commissioner of public works, corporation counsel, and city engineer; Public Safety — commissioner, who appoints chiefs of police and fire departments, with their subordinates, and a health officer and district health physicians ”

“ The office must have been a difficult one, between the Treasury on the one hand and the Board of Works on the other, and although their relations with the architect were of the most friendly character, I cannot find that their appointment greatly facilitated the progress of the work.
Such difficulties must be expected by all who work for the public. No one can question the right of the Houses of Lords and Commons to examine, censure, and indirectly control, those who are working for their service. ”

“ The third great source of public departments has been the creation in comparatively recent times of a number of administrative boards or commissions, whose duties (except in the case of the Board of Works) are not primarily executive; that is, they are not concerned mainly with direct administration, but rather with the supervision and control of local authorities and of bodies exercising functions of a public or a quasi-public nature. ”

“ The Presidents of Manhattan, Bronx, and Brooklyn Boroughs receive $7,500 a year; of Queens and Richmond Boroughs, $5,000. They are elected for four years, and each president has general oversight over streets, bridges, sewers, and buildings in his borough. He may appoint a commissioner of public works, and a superintendent of buildings for his borough, and local school boards. In Queens and Richmond the borough presidents have charge of street-cleaning.
The Board of Aldermen is the legislative body of the city. It consists of seventy-three men elected from Aldermanic districts. ”

“ The Board of Works are represented by the Chief Surveyor of the London District, accompanied by the Clerk of Works to the Houses of Parliament. The Chief Engineer of the House of Commons, who is responsible for all the underground workings of the building, leads the party, the Chief Inspector of Police boldly marching on his left hand. ”

“ The government is vested in a mayor, chosen every two years, and a bicameral council. Of the subordinate officials, the water board, board of public works, and gas board are elected by the council, and the school board is chosen by popular vote. ”

“ In the municipal life of the city it has urged improvements in the fire service, the water supply, the lighting service and the betterment of streets and interested itself in various other spheres of municipal government reform, among them the securing of the great modern amendment of the city charter which has necessitated the reduction of the number of aldermen to one for each ward, and the creation of a board of five commissioners for the disbursement of money, the awarding of contracts and the purchase of material. ”

“ A study of the evolution of the city government is one of the most interesting that the student can make. Many of the provisions of the charter are admirable, such as those securing honest elections, furnishing financial checks, and guarding against public debt. The mayor is elected for four years, and the important offices filled by his appointment are not vacant until the beginning of the third year of his appointment, so that hope of reward for political work is too dim to affect the merits of an election. The composition and election of the school board is also worthy of notice. ”

“ Municipal committees now exist in most places having any pretension to importance, and have charge of municipal business generally, including the care and superintendence of streets, roads, fairs and markets, open spaces, water supply, drainage, education, hospitals, and the like. ”

“ Every city of the commonwealth, and every town having a population of more than ten thousand at the last preceding national or state census, is hereby authorized and directed to create a board to be known as the planning board, whose duty it shall be to make careful studies of the resources, possibilities and needs of the city or town, particularly with respect to conditions which may be injurious to the public health or otherwise injurious in and about rented dwellings, and to make plans for the development of the municipality with special reference to the proper housing of its people. ”

“ The City Manager Plan.—A few years' experience with commission government revealed certain patent defects. The division of the work among five men was frequently found to introduce dissensions and irresponsibility. Commissioners were often lacking in the technical ability required to manage such difficult matters as fire and police protection, public health, public works, and public utilities. Some one then proposed to carry over into city government an idea from the business world. ”

“ To this end it seems to me desirable that when municipal offices are to be filled the discharge of the duties of which requires professional knowledge, skill and experience, the selection should be confined to professional men of good standing. Let us take for an example a department about which there may be some doubt in this respect, the department of public works, meaning the department which has in its charge the matter of drainage, of water supply, of street paving and similar things. It is certainly one of the most important branches of the municipal government. ”

“ Another matter that has engaged public attention is the apparent difference of opinion between the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan District Companies, as to the control of the Inner Circle. Nature has designed them to be one, and but for vested and promoters’ interests, they probably would have been one from the first. ”

“ If the plan commission is to be an intelligent correlating agency, there must be provision for constant reference to it of new construction work of all municipal departments even at the risk of swamping the clerical force of the city planning commission by a mass of detail with little bearing on the city plan. ”

“ These include the secretary of state, who keeps the official records; the treasurer; the auditor; the attorney-general, who conducts the legal affairs of the state; the state superintendent or commissioner of education; together with state boards of health, charity, public works, public utilities, and so on. The titles and functions of these various boards differ greatly from state to state. In Massachusetts there are only twenty-one state departments; in New York there are more than one hundred. ”

“ The Bureau of Municipal Research, admittedly the most practical organization of its kind in the country, is conducting its work along the line of effective competency in city departments. As a result of its investigations, the citizens of New York have been forced to the conclusion to which my colleague has already referred, namely, that the ultimate solution of their municipal difficulties will be reached only when they have disposed of their present inefficient and useless ward council and created in its place a commission council. ”

“ The annals of our cities are full of the creation of appointive state boards composed of men of the highest local standing and intrusted with the carrying out of some great single project,—the erection of a city hall building, the construction of a water works and filtration plant, or of a park system. ”

“ The commission or council serves as a board of directors; the city manager becomes, as it were, a general superintendent. [76] In selecting its manager a city often goes outside its own limits; usually it chooses a man who is an engineer by profession because so much of the work is of a technical nature. When the manager is appointed he plans the work to be done, estimates the cost, awards the contracts, purchases the materials, and hires the labor. The city-manager plan has been adopted by more than a hundred cities, but only a few are large communities. ”

“ The two following are paid, there being three members on each board, one appointed by the mayor every year. The board of education has seven members, serving without pay for three years, being appointed by the mayor in rotation. The library board consists of nine members, who serve without pay, three being appointed by the District Court every year. The boards have as a rule entire charge of their respective departments. The council fixes the aggregate amount which each may spend annually, and beyond this no board can go. ”

“ It shall be proper for said cities to provide, by ordinance, for the exercise of all rights and powers herein conferred upon the City Planning Commission, by a park commission, or kindred municipal bureau or commission, authorized under existing laws. And no person holding office under the government of any of said cities, except the mayor, members of councils, or commissioners, shall be ineligible to serve as a member of a City Planning Commission. ”

“ The accomplishment of large results is due to the fact that organization on such a plan frees more money for relief than it consumes in salaries. All employees of the Board are chosen by civil service examinations. The Board “believes that social action should be based on accurate knowledge and investigations should both precede and accompany all efforts to improve social conditions. It strives for harmonious coöperation with all existing agencies, both public and private, and does not duplicate the work of any. ”

“ Membership of the Secretariat, as will be seen elsewhere, does not render residence at the capital obligatory, indeed distinguished provincial governors are often raised to that dignity, only so, however, when vacancies occur. Next in degree to this office, and of far more practical importance, are six boards representing as many departments in the administration. These are the Board of Civil Service; the Board of Finance; the Board of Rites, Obligations, and Observances (including public institutions and state worship) ”

“ The city council shall have power to appoint a recorder, treasurer, assessor, marshall, supervisor of streets, and all such other officers as may be necessary, and to prescribe their duties and remove them from office at pleasure. ”

“ The effectiveness of any city planning commission is bound to be dependent on the attitude of other existing administrative agencies which have as a part of their function the planning and execution of public improvements. ”

“ The supervising board appointed by Congress, consisting of the Commissioner of Patents, the Architect of the Capitol, and the Engineer in charge of public buildings, is entitled to no less credit for keeping the expenditures within the appropriation, and for the general management of the work. ”

“ They may, if they shall see fit, appoint a board of assistant managers, composed of not less than three nor more than seven persons residing in New York city, or its vicinity, whose duty it shall be to render such assistance to the committee in conducting the affairs of the society as the exigencies of the cause may require. ”

“ He presided regularly at the weekly meetings, and when the executive business came to be done by several committees, he attended them also with the utmost assiduity. On this occasion, as on other occasions in his life, the acceptance of fresh work seemed to have an electric effect on him. After the lapse of seventeen years the operations of the Board are seen by all men to be vast, probably the largest of their kind under any one Board in the world ”