Climate Change

The pervasive impact of climate change on local government’s roles and responsibilities underscores the importance of establishing a national policy agenda and reinforces the need for taking a whole of systems approach in responding to climate change.

1. Clean and renewable energy production allows us to generate the energy we need without the greenhouse gas emissions and negative environmental effects that come with fossil fuels, in turn helping to reduce climate change.

2. Environmental justice continues to be an important part of the struggle to improve and maintain a clean and healthful environment, especially for those who have traditionally lived and worked closest to the sources of pollution in urban and rural communities.

3. Farmers add incredible value to our nation’s economy, providing jobs for people in rural communities and food for our communities. Our national well-being depends on the health of the nation’s agriculture production. Farmers also play a critical role in protecting our environment and helping to tackle climate change by locking carbon into soils. To maintain healthy crops and produce, farmers need protection and stability.

4. Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil demand. The growth in demand for petrochemical products means that petrochemicals are set to account for over a third of the growth in oil demand to 2030, and nearly half to 2050, ahead of trucks, aviation, and shipping. Our economies are heavily dependent on petrochemicals, and it’s one of the key blind spots in the global energy debate, given its influence on future energy trends.

5. Rural and coastal communities are typically dependent on traditional natural resource livelihoods like farming, commercial fishing, and forestry. Saltwater intrusion, compounded by rising sea levels, impacts rural livelihoods by limiting suitable agricultural land and development options, which compounds local economic difficulties.

Health

The health and wellness of America’s neighborhoods is a constant factor for local government officials. Our mayors are working on innovative and wide-reaching health and wellness programs to empower their communities.

1. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a major global public health threat, challenging the provision of healthcare services and their accessibility. Ensuring access to healthcare is critical to prevent illnesses and deaths from COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 cases in health systems that have deteriorated during the pandemic. Black and brown communities were hit the hardest during the pandemic, and now it’s time for local government to ensure equitable access to recovery.

2. Access to nutritional foods and a healthy diet throughout life promotes healthy outcomes, supports normal growth, development, and aging. Proper nutrition also helps to maintain a healthy body weight and reduces the risk of chronic disease, leading to overall better health and well-being. People with healthy eating patterns live longer and are at lower risk for serious health problems such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.

3. Getting preventive care reduces the risk for diseases, disabilities, and death — yet millions of people in the United States don’t get recommended preventive health care services they need each year.

4. Improving the well-being of mothers, infants, and children is an important public health goal for our organization. Mothers and families’ well-being determines the health of the next generation and can impact future public health challenges for the health care system.

Infrastructure

From highway roads and transportation systems to water and waste transport, to broadband, to the power grid, infrastructure enables the economy to properly function. Time and time again, analyses quantifying the effects of this kind of public investment show that they support economic growth. Cities, states, and metropolitan areas throughout America face an unprecedented economic, demographic, fiscal and environmental challenges that make it imperative for the public and private sectors to rethink the way they do business. These new forces are incredibly diverse, but they share an underlying need for modern, efficient, and reliable infrastructure.

1. Telecommunications impact how we can connect with each other, communicate, and conduct business. Reliable communication depends on strong telecommunications infrastructure, empowering decisionmakers, and businesses alike to communicate by phone, internet, wired and wireless connections, and more. Only through this infrastructure do we can communicate with our neighbors locally, across the country, and around the globe.

2. Effective water infrastructure systems help safeguard public health from waterborne and sewage-related infectious bacteria, viruses, parasites, and toxic chemicals. A community’s water infrastructure includes all the man-made and natural features that move and treat water. While holistically it is all part of the same system, it is often convenient to think about infrastructure in terms of drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater.

3. Transportation infrastructure has an enormous impact on sustainable development. Transportation infrastructure, as a complex network, connects cities and accommodates human activities coupling the social, economic, and environmental systems with the population growth. Additionally, the transportation network contributes to the socioeconomic development and increases the quality of life.

Public Safety

When it comes to defining public safety, it involves protecting the public from crimes, disasters, and other threats they may encounter in their everyday lives. These local public safety professionals may be police officers, security agents, emergency response teams, and firefighters, among many more. Regarding public safety, there is an inherent need for authorities to help keep our public safe. The lives of people depend on public safety professionals and their ability to respond to situations quickly, effectively, and accurately.

• With higher numbers of Americans in the criminal justice system than ever, criminal justice reform has become a dire necessity. Meaningful sentencing reform, steps to reduce repeat offenders, and support for law enforcement are crucial to improving public safety, reducing runaway incarceration costs, and making our criminal justice system fairer. Criminal justice reform is working to end the sheer number of prisoners in the justice system through both litigation and advocacy. By fighting for nationwide reform at a variety of government levels, the nation can right wrongs before the problem becomes worse. While no criminal justice system is entirely perfect, we can continually work to improve services to the public.

• Active and successful crime prevention and reduction programs not only reduce crime and save lives, but they also reduce workload for patrol officers and detectives and provide opportunities for positive interactions with the public. Well-planned crime prevention strategies not only prevent crime and victimization, but also contribute to sustainable development.

• Reducing gun violence is an urgent, complex, and multifaceted problem. It requires evidence-based, multifaceted solutions. Gun violence includes homicide, violent crime, attempted suicide, suicide, and unintentional death and injury. Gun violence should be considered a public health issue, an epidemic that needs to be addressed with research and evidence-based strategies that can reduce morbidity and mortality.

• Generational wealth is important because it allows for the transfer of assets and money between family members and can offer a significant financial advantage to your family.

• Workforce development is an essential component of community economic development in any economic climate, and certainly even more critical during the financial crises we’re experiencing today. Workforce development takes a people-first approach to business development. Workforce development not only improves their prospects in life, but also leads to downstream benefits for businesses.

• Housing and shelter programs can help address the root causes of homelessness through a range of essential recovery support services, including mental and substance use disorder treatment, employment, and mainstream benefits. It impacts the availability of healthcare resources, crime and safety, the workforce, and the use of tax dollars.

• Not only do small businesses provide more jobs, but they also bring careers and opportunities. Successful small businesses put money back into their local community through paychecks and taxes, which can support the creation of new small businesses and improve local public services.

• Better schools and educating children not only secure their personal life but collectively contributes to the development of a more reliable nation and the world. It can yield a better environment in which people can differentiate between right and wrong, know the importance of voting, appreciate the diversity in American history, and reduce crimes of youth-aged offenders.

Voting Rights

Following decades of historic progress and fight for civil rights, the mandate for fair and equitable voting practices across the country are more important now than it has been in previous generations. Voting is the language of American democracy. The ability to participate in civic life — to have a voice in choosing the elected officials whose decisions impact our lives, families, and communities — is at the core of what it means to be an American.

• Voting rights are under attack nationwide as states pass voter suppression laws. These laws lead to significantly more burdens for eligible voters trying to exercise their most fundamental constitutional right. Since 2008, states across the country have passed measures to make it harder for Americans—particularly Black and brown people, seniors, college students, and people with disabilities—to exercise their right to cast a ballot. These measures include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls. The location of district lines decides which voters vote for which representative.

• Redistricting and gerrymandering will change the relevant voters, and can change the identity, allegiance, and political priorities of a district’s representative, and of the legislative delegation.