Alex Biggers is a Savings Program Coordinator at the Community Empowerment Fund in Chapel Hill, NC. In Chapel Hill, students and community members have helped form a unique partnership between two groups that rarely interact: homeless individuals and banks. Based around the model of microfinance, th … Read more

Jeff Hughes is the Director of the School of Government’s Environmental Finance Center and a School of Government Faculty Member Many essential community and environmental services rely on an enterprise service model in which user fees cover the full cost of service provision. Services such as solid … Read more

Rick Morse is a School of Government faculty member. Collaborative governance in its many forms, from intergovernmental and public-private partnerships to stakeholder consensus building processes, is becoming more and more common across the U.S. and will continue to be so due to the highly interconn … Read more

Glenn Barnes is Senior Project Director with the Environmental Finance Center based at the UNC School of Government.  This past July, the state issued a letter to notify North Carolina cities and counties of an opportunity to access a relatively inexpensive source of capital: Qualified Energy Conser … Read more

Lydian Altman is director of the Strategic Public Leadership Initiative with the School of Government. An eastern North Carolina town, with a declining population of about 10,000, held its first-ever retreat earlier this year.  I served as the retreat facilitator. The Town has experienced a change i … Read more

Norma Houston is a School of Government faculty member. In the wake of Hurricane Irene, as is the case after any major disaster, communities struggle to clean-up, rebuild, and get back to work.  In counties covered by a presidential major disaster declaration, FEMA assistance may be available to eli … Read more

Jeff Hughes is a Director of the School of Government’s Environmental Finance Center and a School of Government Faculty Member Jake Wicker, a long time faculty member at the School of Government, used to like to say that Governments don’t pay for anything and that it’s the people who pay – Governmen … Read more

Sejal Zota is the School of Government Immigration Law Specialist. Community development and other local government agencies in North Carolina occasionally ask whether they can require contractors to use the E-Verify program. E-Verify is a web-based system that allows participating employers to elec … Read more

Rick Morse is a School of Government faculty member. The fiscal climate for local governments (rural communities in particular) is daunting. Local governments are in a state of fiscal crisis and the long term forecast is not encouraging. Many use the term the “new normal” to express the sentiment th … Read more

Jonathan Morgan is a School of Government faculty member. Communities and regions increasingly use strategic planning to chart their course for economic development.  Strategic planning is a process that involves assessing a community’s assets and opportunities and building consensus around a set of … Read more