An abutment is the foundation on either end of a bridge — the structural element that holds the span in place and transfers the load to solid ground. Without it, there is no crossing.
Rural and small public agencies across the United States are being asked to carry increasing loads with eroding foundations. As a longtime student of rural governance, I’m curious about what makes organizations tick and eager to explore alternate ways to cross the Rubicon — thinking together about what it takes to build and sustain community assets that endure.
The Weight We’re Carrying
The Weight We’re Carrying: A Look at Public Agency Capacity Across Northern California Across Northern California, and I imagine in other rural areas and small public agencies, the lift of providing public services is growing steadily heavier and the path forward is steeper with each step. The PatternBudget shortfalls, emergency loans and reserve drawdowns are becoming commonplace. This did not happen overnight and as John F. Kennedy famously paraphrased Tacitus “Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan.” Few will own how we got here. But here we are. Within the last few weeks there have been stories on Humboldt County tapping into its reserves to make up budget deficits, Shasta County filling a $10 million hole in its Health and Human Services department (normally a fully state funded enterprise) and over the last year the State of California assigned an administrator to oversee all of Plumas County’s