The purpose of this article is to identify current topics of interest on local government collaboration that have joint interest from both academicians and practitioners; then, examine the survey results of a dozen seasoned local government managers in Florida to gain their insight into these topics.

For the purposes of this article, the term local government collaboration has been limited to service arrangements where two or more public agencies come together and each contributes money, staff, or use of a facility to provide a local government service.

Contractual arrangements that simply involve a local government buying services from another government, nonprofit, or private entity were not considered in this article.

Scholarly Interest in Collaboration

A review of literature on local government collaboration finds academicians have recommended further research in these five areas:

• Study the effect that financial stress has on local government choices to engage in inter-local agreements.
• Examine informal and nonfinancial forms of inter-local agreements.
• Describe the outcomes of successful collaborative initiatives.
• Analyze the internal preparations involved in local government collaboration.
• Assess how state and federal mandates shape local government collaboration.

Practitioner Interest in Collaboration

Twenty-two local government practitioners, including city and county managers and department heads, were surveyed during a 2014 Florida City and County Management Association regional training session to determine which of the five academic topics were of most interest to this sample of local government practitioners. The results of the survey showed that interests were split among three areas:

• Assess how state and federal mandates shape local government collaboration.
• Examine informal and non-financial forms of inter-local agreements.
• Describe the outcomes of successful collaborative initiatives. (Note: decision-making and evaluation processes are included in this area of interest.)

Survey of Florida Managers

The practitioners’ research preferences were combined into a second survey instrument that was used to survey and interview Florida city and county managers regarding their own experiences with the three areas identified above.

Like other states, Florida is diverse in terms of culture, politics, and geography. In an effort to consider these factors, a survey was sent to 30 city and county managers from different regions of the state.

Only managers with at least 10 years of local government management experience were asked to respond, and 12 managers agreed to participate. All respondents were actively employed as the leaders of their organizations when this survey was conducted.

On average, they have been employed in a local government management position for 32.5 years and during that time, have been employed as the manager or chief appointed official for 19.5 years.

Here is a summary of their responses:

State and Federal Mandates on the Decision to Collaborate. Interestingly, none of the responding managers claimed that any state or federal mandates impacted their decision to collaborate with other agencies to provide local government services. This is notable because mandates, particularly unfunded mandates, have been imposed on local governments for decades.

Although the frustration with unfunded mandates is well documented in a variety of local government reports, the decision to collaborate on providing municipal services was not impacted by these mandates according to the managers in this survey.

Informal and Nonfinancial Services Collaborations. Occasional equipment sharing and borrowing was cited as the most often used informal and nonfinancial type of service collaboration. In this type of arrangement, local governments ask another local government to borrow a garbage truck or other heavy equipment for a day when the equipment they have is in the garage for maintenance.

In other cases, the equipment borrowed—a forklift or generator, for example—is used only occasionally by the lending community. An informal collaborative agreement enables adjoining communities to share this type of equipment.

Formal Service Collaborations. In an effort to vet which inter-local agreements were informal and nonfinancial, managers were asked to provide examples of any inter-local agreements their governments had entered into with other agencies. Most of the examples provided were formal service collaborations.

These agreements involved sharing facilities for emergency medical and recreation services, parking services, and storm water management. Here are more detailed examples:

• Space is provided in a city fire station for county emergency medical services personnel, and the county improves the living quarters in the station. In Florida, emergency medical services are often provided or at least coordinated through county governments. This model may explain why this type of collaboration was described by many of the managers interviewed.
• City Manager Judy Zimomra, Sanibel, Florida, described a tri-party, facility-use agreement involving the city, the county, and the school board. All Florida school boards are independent and countywide special districts. In this tri-party agreement, the three parties contributed money to design and bujild a large multiuse recreation facility on 25 acres of school board property located withiin the city. Often the shared recreation facilities on school board property result in day use for school children and evening and weekend uses for the general population. In this tri-party example, however, the recreation facility was constructed to have some completely separate facilities—a separate gym—on the same property, which enables the general population to use this facility during school hours.
• City Manager Bruce Haddock, Oldsmar, Florida, described a four-city agreement that enables residents from these cities to use the recreation facilities found in each of the other cities at no additional cost, just as if they were all one government. The arrangement significantly expands the recreation opportunities for residents in each community.
• City Manager Jim McKnight, Rockledge, Florida, described a tri-party, facility-use agreement that provides multiple-type services on the same site. In his example, development of a 50-acre stormwater park was created when two municipalities and the county entered into an agreement to fund and develop a stormwater lake. The water that drains into the lake provides a water quantity and water quality benefit for the surrounding area and the lake water is treated and used as reclaimed water for irrigation. A joint-use dog park has also been built on the site.
• City Manager Pam Brangaccio, New Smyrna Beach, Florida, described an inter-local agreement between the city and the county that involved providing needed beach parking. To increase parking for city and county beach goers, the city and county entered into a formal agreement that involved the county purchasing land for an off-street parking area.The city and county split the cost of developing the space for parking, and the city maintains and operates the parking lot and charges for parking and keeps the revenue.

Decision Making Involved in Collaboration

The managers didn’t provide a general template on the decision-making process involved in collaboration. Manager Zimomra may have summed up the responses best when she said, “The process depends on the experience of the manager and the personalities of those involved.”

It was clear that some managers struggled with this question because each initiative was different in terms of resources available, opportunities presented, agencies involved, how the idea was proposed and by whom, whether there is a mutual financial benefit or mutual service benefit, political acceptability in the eyes of the elected officials, and such numerous other “human factors” as establishing trust.

In those cases where the collaboration was initiated and implemented at the staff level, the process was more quantifiable, usually involving a cost-benefit analysis, and most often involving cross-agency discussions involving peers who know and respect each other.

Evaluating Collaborative Agreements

Managers overwhelmingly said the examples given were successful. These arrangements saved money, improved relationships, earned positive resident feedback, or enhanced service levels. Given that these examples were offered up as examples of collaborations, this result should not be unexpected.

It might be somewhat surprising, however, that formal evaluation processes were generally not incorporated into most of the agreements. Manager McKnight did emphasize the “importance of reviewing all aspects of the arrangement that may have changed over time, including costs and relationships.”

Manager Brangaccio emphasized the need to have an annual “true up” where costs are concerned; that is, recalculate the costs of the program and recalculate each share of this cost to ensure it is as intended.

City Manager Ron Ferris, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, however, spoke about one of his most successful collaboration arrangements as being measured by “the stories that come out from the citizens and by maintaining the collaboration without increasing the cost in the budget.”

Although these responses appear general, their responses do reflect reality in terms of what the managers and their elected officials and their residents perceive as important in terms of evaluation of their collaborative arrangements.

Key Lessons Learned

Collectively, the managers offered these recommendations when considering collaborative arrangements:

• Be clear and up-front about expectations.
• Over communicate.
• Recognize it can be a long process.
• Be transparent.
• Plan, but expect things to go wrong.
• Look outside your organization for solutions.
• Look for people, agencies, and departments with common interests in order to break down barriers (egos).
• Look at the bigger picture.
• Managers generally emphasized the importance of planning, educating, and looking for mutual benefits. Again, no general template was offered in terms of preparing or evaluating collaborative service arrangements.

Going Forward

The results of the manager survey found that most formal collaboration agreements involved sharing facilities to provide services and most informal collaborations involved sharing equipment. Somewhat surprising, none of the managers felt that federal or state mandates had any impact on the decision for their organizations to seek and enter into collaborative arrangements with other agencies.

What’s more, there didn’t appear to be a general agreement on the process to follow in collaboration initiatives and, for the most part, evaluations of these initiatives were based on political acceptability (resident satisfaction) and cost (maintaining consistent budget for service).

This article was not intended to be a representation of the views of local government managers throughout the country or even throughout Florida. Rather, it was intended to ascertain what topics on local government collaboration appear to have some joint interest from academicians and practitioners and to gain some insight from managers in Florida in terms of their experiences with these topics.

This research could easily be expanded elsewhere. It is recommended that managers interested in research collaboration with academicians consider topics that further examine the impact of mandates on collaboration or examine the “process” to consider when planning a collaboration agreement.