Management of Mercer Island City - Term Paper Example

The paper "Management of Mercer Island City" is a brilliant example of a term paper on management. Mercer Island is a that is located in Washington’s King County. Specifically, the city is located in Lake Washington on an island called Mercer. The City is governed by a local government that offers services to the general public throughout the city. Therefore, the constituent the local government serves is mainly the local population. As a result, in order to serve the 22 720 local populations, the city’s local government has 179 employees who serve its constituents in all its departments. However, the City has nine boards and commission whose membership varies, therefore, making the number of the people working in the local government to fluctuate in accordance with the commission and boards’ composition. The city organization structure is available on the city official website where each department, commission, and board are elaborated. 

In order to facilitate the development of remaining buildable areas, the city needed a competent department that had all the technical expertise to inspect the area that is being considered for development before it can issue a permit, reviewing drawings and overseeing the construction. The action to establish such a department was adamant to ensure the safety of all the residents. However, with the advancement in technology, the ability to amend soil properties has been achieved and practices employed in other parts of the world. Also, the ability to manage the waters and create extra land has been done. Therefore, although the city has made good progress in developing a procedure to permit real estate development, the city has maintained a narrow technological approach to the process.
Homeowners and developers encounter bureaucracies to obtain permits. This is because they were required to visit various city departments to fulfill various city guidelines that are essential to facilitate real estate development. In some cases, contradictory information is issued by different city departments. Therefore, weakness in information management is evident. As such, it is clear that the interdepartmental coordination does not exist. Consequently, this calls for harmonization of the information within the entire city departments to ensure consistency and reduction in bureaucracy.
The difficulty in handling the bureaucratic nature of the city authorities is the main challenge. This is because it deters potential investors since they will lose value for their money due to delays in starting a project. Therefore, this makes the problem most critical. The reason behind this view is improved governance has proved to facilitate economic development in other parts of the world. In order to justify the argument, the study shall use published materials mainly relating to island development both locally and in other parts of the world such as Hong Kong Read More