and shall have the power to punish any such contempt in the manner provided by ordinance. SECTION 39. At the head of each department there shall be a director who shall have supervision and control of the department. He shall have power to prescribe rules and regulations, not inconsistent with this Charter, for the conduct of the officers and employes of his department; for the distribution and performance of its business; and for the custody and preservation of the books, records, papers and property under its control. SECTION 40. The work of the several departments shall be distributed among such divisions thereof as are established by this Charter and as may be established by the Council by ordinance. There shall be a commissioner, or chief, in charge of each division who shall be appointed, and may be removed, by the director of the department in conformity with the civil service provisions of this Charter. Each commissioner shall, with the approval of the director of his department, appoint all officers and employes of his division and have supervision and control of its affairs. SECTION 41. The director of a department, with the approval of the City Manager, may appoint a board composed of citizens qualified to act in an advisory capacity to the commissioner of any division under his supervision. The members of any such board shall serve without compensation and their duty shall be to consult and advise with the commissioner, but not to direct the conduct of the division. Any recommendation of such board shall be in writing and become a part of the record of the department. Stated public meetings of such boards shall be called by the commissioner for the consideration of the affairs of the division. The commissioner of the division shall be chairman of such meetings. SECTION 42. The director of each department and the head of each office, shall annually, on such date as may be fixed by the Council, render to the City Manager a full report of the transactions of his department or office for the year, and shall furnish the Council or the City Manager at any time such information relating to his department or office as either may require. 176. METROPOLITAN AREAS There are many cities in the United States that have outgrown their boundaries. They have become the nucleus of a cluster of surrounding communities all of which taken together constitute a metropolitan area. In many respects these communities are a unit, but for reasons of local pride annexation by the central city is frequently opposed. In order to meet this situation, the creation of a new governmental unit, to be known as the region, has been suggested. This proposal is thoughtfully discussed in the following selection. [Thomas H. Reed, "The Region, a New Governmental Unit; Plans must not only be made but executed. Great as are the difficulties in the way of carrying out a plan which affects but one city, they are as nothing to those which dog the path of the regional plan of a metropolis. It is proper, therefore, that we should consider not only the matter of organization for metropolitan plan making but of the organization of the metropolis for plan execution. Consistent and comprehensive results cannot ordinarily be expected from the mere voluntary co-operation of the authorities concerned. It is easy enough to understand why the directors of the "Plan of New York and Its Evirons" pin their faith to voluntary co-operation. They have nothing else to pin to. The proposal to unite in any formal way the parts of three states which fall within the metropolitan area of New York would arouse suspicions and antagonisms enough to lose the battle before it is begun. Under such circumstances it is clearly the part of wisdom to preach voluntary co-operation. Given an intelligently directed and adequately supported planning agency to stimulate the multitude of diverse authorities to action, great things may be thus accomplished. In general, however, to rely on voluntary co-operation is to surrender all hope of substantial success. The objects of metropolitan organization are: first, to secure the execution of a uniform policy or plan with regard to that group of services properly supplied by local rather than by state or national enterprise and yet of interest to the whole metropolis; and second, to achieve an equitable adjustment of financial burdens between the various portions of the metropolitan community. A metropolis, however, is not an assemblage of individuals so much as a collection of communities in which individuals are already assembled. To these communities attach a complex of pride, prejudice and affection which give rise to what our Belgian friends call "esprit de clocher." Political scientists have long realized the error of ignoring the people's natural emotional responses, however irrational they may appear. No opportunity should be neglected for employing the sentiment of local patriotism in the service of local government. Metropolitan organization, therefore, must not fly in the face of the traditions and habits of the people, but must leave in existence, to the greatest extent possible, the customary units of local government. A variety of attempts have been made to solve the metropolitan problem. None of them have satisfactorily solved it. We must seek a new method. To begin with, dependence cannot be placed on the enlargement of city boundaries to cover the metropolitan area. The process ocess of annexation has always lagged far behind the spread of population. Take Brussels as an extreme example, with 215,145 people in the city of Brussels and 593,188 in the fourteen neighboring communes. Take Boston, with 748,060 inside the city, and 1,054,260 in a ten-mile zone outside. Paris made her last annexations in 1860, and approximately a third of the population of metropolitan Paris now dwell in the banlieu. The present boundaries of the administrative county of London were fixed in 1855 and 3,000,000 people now dwell in the outer ring. Large-scale attempts to solve the metropolitan problem have usually been accompanied by recognition of the identity of existing units some of them by genuine municipal federalism. The proposition of further municipal expansion, however, even so qualified arouses increasing opposition. Cities grow after the manner of the forest. Around the parent tree a grove springs up, but seed are also borne afield, and some falling in favored spots sprout into new groves which grow with the first until all are merged in one spreading forest. When outlying centers of population have long enjoyed an individual life that strange spirit, civic pride, breathes through them. They cling determinedly to their individuality, and almost always resist annexation under any guise. The longer they have stood alone, the stouter their resistance. A growing conviction exists that there is a limit to successful bigness. Once a size has been attained, at half a million, or a million, where the substantial economies of large-scale purchasing and organization have been reached, further bigness only hampers administration. A great city loses in the increasing impersonality of all its efforts more than it gains by the large scale of its operations. As a means of enlisting popular interest in government, great size is equally a failure. In the swollen metropolis the individual is lost and knows it. There was a time when men could be induced to give up local independence and vote for annexation to a big city so that they might say, "I am a New Yorker." To-day they seem to prefer to say, "I am a citizen of Bronxville." The growing army of suburbanites have forsaken the great city because they deliberately prefer the life of the smaller community. They can scarcely be expected to welcome reabsorption into the mass they have tried to escape. The day when the metropolitan problem could be solved by annexation is past. It is easy in the perplexities of the metropolitan problem to turn to the supreme authority of the state for relief. In the centralized states of Europe, and, to a less extent in England, there is no doubt that some of the conflicts of interest characteristic of metropolitan conditions are smoothed away by the interposition of some department of the central government. I have no disposition to question the beneficent results of thus stimulating the co-operation of neighboring communities. It may prove especially effective where the machinery of common action, like the joint committees of the English planning act or the syndicats of communes provided by the French Code Municipal are at hand. There is, however, no administrative tutelage of local government in the United States nor is likely soon to be. Quite different is that species of state interference which puts in the hands of state officers or boards the performance within a metropolitan area of functions normally entrusted to local control. Such a unit as the metropolitan police district of London is to be justified as a national necessity, not as an expedient for ordinary police administration. The metropolitan district commission in Massachusetts which provides parks, water supply, main sewers and more recently regional planning in the metropolitan area of Boston, is, it is true, appointed by the governor and has, nevertheless, found genuine popular support. Perhaps this is to be explained by the fact that nearly half the population and a decided preponderance of the leadership of Massachusetts is to be found within the district. There are a few other examples of such authorities, such as the Passaic Valley sewerage commission, [the] Milwaukee metropolitan sewerage commission and some port authorities, but there is no likelihood of the general adoption of this method of metropolitan government. It is too distinct a violation of the principle of home rule to be acceptable to the public. It means that the government of the districts is not responsible to the people who support it with their taxes. Nor is it any more acceptable to the political scientist. We have discovered no other way of qualifying a community for self-government than by allowing it to govern itself. To remove from local control governmental services in their nature of local interest, is to weaken the self-governing capacity of the community. We must reject, therefore, direct state administration of metropolitan affairs as a general solution of the metropolitan problem. In the absence of a comprehensive plan for dealing with the problems of the metropolis frequent resort has been had to ad hoc authorities. Apart from the perfectly obvious objection that only a flock of such authorities could give us the general solution we seek, they are usually open to attack on more specific grounds. Where the governing body of an ad hoc metropolitan authority is made up of representatives chosen by the cities concerned, it almost inevitably becomes unwieldy and thereby incapable of vigorous and responsible administration of complicated and difficult affairs. The metropolitan water board of London, for example, consists of 66 members representing the London county council, the city corporation, the county councils of the neighboring counties and numerous county-borough, borough and urban-district councils. Its accomplishments have been sufficiently satisfactory, but its best friends admit it is too large, that it is fortunate in having nothing more complicated to administer than a going water service. There is also an unfortunate irresponsibility on the part of such an indirectly selected body, a difficulty that increases with the size of the body and the number of units of local government represented. Where, on the other hand, the governing body is selected directly by the people it is objected that elections, already too frequent, are unduly multiplied. If there were to be several such authorities, as there must be, completely to solve the problem of metropolitan government, this objection would become overwhelming. It is almost impossible to induce the public to interest itself in local elections now. We cannot afford to diffuse further an interest already so attenuated. I would not be understood to condemn the establishment of particular ad hoc metropolitan authorities. The gravest reasons have usually prompted their creation. The rapid increase in their number in the last few years is our best evidence of the reality of the metropolitan problem. Many of them, among which may be mentioned the Montreal metropolitan commission, the sanitary district of Chicago, and numerous port authorities, are to be credited with a liberal measure of success. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the creation of ad hoc authorities offers no thorough and permanent solution of the metropolitan problem. ... |