Early work on municipal service-quality assessment recommended multiple measures of performance from both providers and users. Citizen satisfaction surveys have rivaled their more quantitative counterpart, administrative performance measures, in adoption, but the implication of survey results for action is not well understood by managers or scholars. To achieve meaningfully integrated multiple measures of service quality, we need to explore the dimensions of citizen satisfaction and review patterns of satisfaction across localities. We also need to understand the relationship between administrative performance measures and citizen perceptions. This crosssectional analysis of municipal citizen satisfaction and performance benchmark data suggests that citizen satisfaction survey results are useful to managers in conjunction with performance-measurement programs as part of a multiple-indicator approach to evaluating municipal service quality. However, understanding citizen perceptions requires a different perspective than that applied to administrative service performance measurement.

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Many policy analysts have cautioned against public spending for professional and amateur sports. Within the last year, numerous cities have received demands from major and minor league teams for investments. n e s e investments by the public sector can involve hundreds of millions of dollars and are usually ddended by the economic impact of the facilities or teams and the economic development and revitalization which will follow. Indianapolis formulated an economic development strategy which relied substantially on sports. In addition, its development policies did not involve one team or facility, but a series of

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In this era of government reinvention and devolution, some have expressed interest in applying that logic to the local level by including neighborhood associations among the mechanisms for delivering urban services. However, if decision-making authority were to be decentralized to a greater extent, there is the possibility that the decisions of these organizational participants might not be reflective of the group they are supposed to represent. This article seeks to examine the issue representation ability of neighborhood associations. Using a unique neighborhood-level dataset from Indianapolis, this analysis reveals how representative the organization's activities are in terms of the issues that are of most importance to residents (other participants and non-participants). In addition, the article presents and tests a model to explain differences in the levels of representation. The findings raise concerns with the wisdom of such devolution as well as highlight the environmental and organizational characteristics that influence issue representation.Community building is important for many of the reinvention initiatives now part of the urban policy agenda. To reform communities, many assume that the devolution of authority over service delivery and planning or other citizen participation will be a useful means of supporting community building efforts. While some argue people-based strategies are best to develop communities, the more common approach is place-based. Under place-based strategies policies are designed to improve the quality of life in a geographic area. It is expected that improvements in the quality of life will reconnect people to the body politic thus establishing a base for community building. For example, targeted anti-crime programs can increase the neighborhood sense of security and facilitate greater interaction in the community, and financial commitments can enhance the physical health of the area.Policies generated from the place-based approach frequently make explicit efforts to integrate citizens into the political process as much as possible. But there are different ways of accomplishing this as evidenced by the wide array of experiments and programs in place across