Elected Official's Little Handbook: A Portable Guide for Local Government Legislators (Little Handbook Series) [Ring-bound]

Eleanor Cohen (Author), Len Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1994

Congratulations, youve been elected to a local government office in your community - city council, board of supervisors, school board or special district. Your euphoria lasts about as long as your first meeting. During the election campaign you distinguished yourself from others by upstaging opponents, making promises about increasing services and lowering taxes, and even attacking the existing governing body and its policies. Confrontation and rhetoric worked well.

As soon as you take your new seat, you are thrust into a world that requires a different set of skills and understandings. Within days, you discover that virtually every tactic that brought you success during the election campaign backfires in your quest to become an effective governing board member. While you are givensome slack, you are soon ostracized if you continue to rely upon campaign rhetoric. The confrontational mode is counterproductive and turns colleagues off. Prepare for Meetings
Ask Penetrating Questions
Clarify Expectations with the Chief Administrator
Manage Difficult Meetings
Avoid Common Chairperson Mistakes
Evaluate the Meeting Agenda
Evaluate Written Staff Reports
Identify Meeting Ploys
Work as a Productive Team Member

The Elected Officials Little Handbook is a compact, 71/4 by 41/2, loose leaf reference guide that is presented in outline form, making it easy to read and easily fits in a purse or brief case. This is the third book in the Little Handbook series.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Elected officials often enter the political arena with spirit and enthusiasm, a pocketful of ideas, and a little training in the day-to-day processes they must work through to get things done. Many have other full-time jobs that demand their attention, and yet the minute they are sworn in, they have reams of paper to read, a new set of people to deal with, skills to be learned, and new roles to play.

In the Elected Officials Little Handbook, Len Wood tries to ease the transition from private citizen to productive elected official by presenting in outline form a handy guide to such mundane topics as agendas, staff interaction with the elected body, open meeting laws, dealing with reporters, and elected officials responsibilities. The guide is divided into sections called Roles, Duties, Meetings, Teamwork, and Political Savvy. The text is short and peppered with quotations. It provides advice, explanations, and checklists and could quickly become the security blanket for the new official, who must shed campaign rhetoric and work within a whole new set of procedures to get things done.

The portable guide answers such basic questions--the kind that people sometimes feel silly asking--as how do I control a meeting when the crowd has turned ugly, how do I get something on the agenda, and how do I unearth a colleagues hidden agenda? It helps the new elected official define his or her role with colleagues and appointed bodies and offers helpful questions that can be asked during budget sessions and other meetings that are typical of all agencies.

This invaluable reference tool for the elected official also helps the public manager assist new bosses in becoming comfortable and effective in their new environment, one that often is loaded with pitfalls for the uninitiated. As one of the more insightful quotations from President Lyndon Johnson states, When the burden of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it couldbe worse. I could be a mayor. -- Public Management Magazine, October 1994

This is great little quick reference guide to over 80 important governing board topics. Every councilmember should have a copy. -- Small Cities Publishing

From the Author

When Virginia Denny, Mayor of Perris, California first saw the Elected Official's Little Handbook she said "What a great book. I wish they would have provided this to me when I was first elected. It has lots of valuable information in it". This is the kind of reaction I was after when I designed the Little Handbooks, The idea was to provide public officials with pertinent and meaningful information in summary fashion.

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Product Details

• Ring-bound: 176 pages
• Publisher: Training Shoppe (May 15, 1994)
• ISBN-10: 0963437429
• ISBN-13: 978-0963437426
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,625,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)