As described by Mayor Clare Higgins, “cityschool is a 9-week in-depth introduction to how your city government works and is modeled on the successful Citizens Police Academy. We often receive phone calls in my office which begin with ‘I’m not sure what office to call, but…’, which made us think we can do a better job of getting information to people about the various city departments, what they do, and why. Anyone interested in participating may contact my office [link] for a registration form. Cityschool will meet on Wednesday evenings from 6:00 – 8:00 beginning on October 29.”
On October 20, a special cityschool 101 session was presented at JFK Middle School for those who wanted an introduction to the program, but who might not be able to commit to the full course. Here are the handouts from this session. They may also be downloaded as a PDF (1.6MB), where the images are larger.
Finance structure:
For additional detail on the city’s revenue and expenditures, visit the web pages of the Mayor’s Office. The FY09 departmental budget requests are particularly interesting. For example, the request from the Police Department (MS Word document) provides crime statistics by category for 2004-2007. The index of crimes in the 9 most serious offense categories increased 11.1% in 2007 vs. 2006.
See also:
Gazette: “Residents get peek inside Northampton’s city hall” (10/13/08)
…includes presentations and give-and-take sessions with many of the 28 city department heads and leaders of dozens of volunteer committees, boards and commissions…
The Republican: “Program aims to ‘school’ public” (10/9/08)