Work to consolidate public facilities is gaining momentum amid a growing need to make more efficient use of public spaces like city halls and libraries as Japan's population continues to fall. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/16/japan/consolidating-public-facilities/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #localgovernment #depopulation #disasterpreparedness
Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley: 5000th item digitized!. “The Institute of Governmental Studies Library (IGSL) at UC Berkeley has reached a remarkable achievement: more than 5,000 local government documents from across California have been digitized and made freely accessible to the public! Launched in the summer of 2024, the project has digitized a sizable portion of its local […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/15/institute-of-governmental-studies-5000th-item-digitized/
Route Fifty: 911 looks to AI to filter out non-emergency calls . “Utah’s Weber Area Dispatch 911, a public safety answering point, is using artificial intelligence to filter out harassing calls to its non-emergency line to ensure call takers are free to answer 911 calls.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/07/14/route-fifty-911-looks-to-ai-to-filter-out-non-emergency-calls/
The Richmonder: ATF officials apologize after using Richmond police database for immigration enforcement. “Richmond police chief Rick Edwards said in a press release Tuesday afternoon that data from the department’s license plate reader program was used to assist with immigration enforcement, in violation of the department’s policy. According to the press release, as soon as the police […]
Calishat: CivicRadius Search: Find Gov Web Sites On a Map And Search Them Via Google. “Recently I learned (via experimenting and mucking around) how to use APIs to enhance datasets. After that I grabbed CISA’s official list of .gov sites from GitHub and used the Nominatim API to add a lat/long to each listing. That enhanced dataset is the heart of CivicRadius Search, a new way to find and […]
Claims of racism on the rise in local councils after Voice failure
By Olivia Sanders
A wave of decisions to exclude First Nations Australians at the local government level has left many Indigenous communities feeling marginalised.
KSTP: Hennepin County refuses to release public records related to attack on state lawmakers. “Hennepin County is refusing to hand over information related to the attack on state lawmakers that the public has a right to see. The 911 call made from inside the Hoffman home has been described as a critical factor in stopping the attack.”
Council says homeless people consented to having camps destroyed
By Kenji Sato
Moreton Bay Council says homeless people consented to leaving their tent sites and having their possessions thrown into a council rubbish truck.
Japan established a consortium comprising the national and local governments and private-sector companies with the goal of fostering female digital experts. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/08/japan/politics/female-digital-experts-launch/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #politics #digitalization #localgovernment #wakakoyata
Australia's next great city for staff leaving with NDAs and secret payouts:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/millions-in-secret-payouts-inside-the-city-of-parramatta-s-staff-crisis-20250703-p5mca0.html
Non-paywall: https://12ft.io/https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/millions-in-secret-payouts-inside-the-city-of-parramatta-s-staff-crisis-20250703-p5mca0.html
"The City of Parramatta has spent almost $5.24 million of ratepayers’ money removing 81 staff in four years, and 30 of them have signed secret agreements for payouts.
"Figures obtained under a freedom-of-information request reveal the extent of a staffing crisis at one of the largest and most powerful councils in Sydney.
"The council spent $4.26 million between January 1, 2022 and May 14, 2025 on 30 deeds and agreements – including settlement and non-disclosure agreements – with staff whose employment ended."
#auspol #nswpol #parramatta #ParramattaCityCouncil #LocalGovernment
Should the government tell you how long to spend with your dog?
By James Tugwell and Elizabeth Byrne
Pet owners would be legally required to spend a minimum of three hours with their dog every day under the proposed laws, but questions remain about how such laws would be enforced.
The government plans to study how food trucks owned by local governments and dispatched to serve hot meals following disasters can be used at other times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/01/japan/disaster-food-trucks-expansion/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #food #trucks #localgovernment #disasterpreparedness
The average income of Japan's prefectural governors stood at ¥24.13 million ($167,852) in 2024, a survey showed Monday. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/01/japan/politics/prefectural-governors-income/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #politics #surveys #localgovernment
New Jersey Monitor: Bill would end mandate that N.J. public entities use news outlets to publish legal notices. “Senate President Nick Scutari’s bill would permit governments to post legal notices on their own websites starting March 1, 2026, and require the secretary of state to help set up a website that would include legal notices from all of New Jersey’s public entities.”
American Shore and Beach Preservation Association: Closing June 30th | 2025 National Beach Nourishment Database Update. “The ASBPA National Beach Nourishment Database is an online geodatabase that provides national-scale statistics on U.S. communities beach nourishment efforts over the last century. The database has been compiled over the last two decades and is updated annually by ASBPA […]
Free coastal campsite closes with rubbish, human waste left behind
By Emily JB Smith, Peter Barr, and Samantha Goerling
A WA south coast tourist town closes its free caravan and campervan campsite, offering a low-cost campground in its place amid fears tourists will head elsewhere.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-23/hopetoun-close-free-campsite-tourism-concerns/105438946
#Camping #TravelandTourism #LocalGovernment #TourismandLeisureIndustry #RegionalCommunities #EmilyJBSmith #PeterBarr # #SamanthaGoerling
Scientific Data: City-Defined Neighborhood Boundaries in the United States . ” Researchers lack widespread but locally-sourced data on neighborhoods, and instead often adopt widely available but arbitrary Census geographies as neighborhood proxies. … We address this tension between scale and precision by collecting, cleaning, and providing to researchers a new dataset of city-defined […]
following the activities of the local planning commission is always educational. In the latest minutes, one of the commissioners questioned the up-to-date-ness of the master plan, only to be reminded by the city planner that two meetings ago the commission was presented with the master plan for review, so that individual should ostensibly already be looking at whether or not it is up-to-date. Womp womp.
Japan should review the way regional administrative tasks are carried out as some local governments are struggling with a lack of specialized personnel and expertise, a government study group said Monday. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/17/japan/politics/local-governments-tasks-review/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #politics #localgovernment #internalaffairsministry #depopulation
Many prefectures and cities in Japan are eager to host regional branches of the national government's upcoming disaster management agency, which is aimed for launch in fiscal 2026. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/06/16/japan/politics/japan-disaster-agency-regional-branches/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #japan #politics #disasterpreparedness #earthquakes #localgovernment #shigeruishiba
