Special of the week Issue 9-1969
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NBER the national educational radio network presents
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special of the week. This is the third of the southern half hour
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radio documentary programs on Metropolitan Government prepared for broadcast
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by the capital cities broadcast station in Detroit WJR.
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The producer and narrator is Oscar for Annette WJR news.
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The title for this series is there a better way.
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This is the sound of the John C. lodge expressway in Detroit. At 5
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o'clock in the afternoon thousands of cars are heading out of the city.
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This is a multimillion dollar roadway. Some say it's a subsidy
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for suburbia. And it is one of thousands in the country. Is there a better.
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Room.
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Is there a better way. The series of WJR News special reports on
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local government program number one dealt with regional think the
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growing awareness of the urban problem is regional in nature and not confined to the
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core city the second in the series talked about urbanization people
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clustering together for ease and variety of contact.
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This report talks about the fight from the city the
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so-called flight from the cities is basically a result of modern
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transportation. The speaker is the executive director of the
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International City Managers Association
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and they couldn't live any further from downtown Chicago than the car
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could conveniently. Get. In a reasonable period of
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time and then came. On the streetcar and. His
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father and her family moved further and further from downtown Chicago. This
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is back in the. Towards the end of the last century. And so
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there's something that has suddenly hit the urban scene that it begins to
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flatten out and sprawl. It has been dramatized of course an
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accelerated because of the automobile. But even before the automobile we
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could see it in the study of cities in relation to rail transportation commuter
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rail transportation. And you look at the pattern of growth and you'll see these fingers
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reaching out where there is urban type development in proximity to the
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communal railroads.
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What happened when this when the automobile became within everybody's economic reach
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is that these spaces in between the fingers were filled in and
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it became a much bigger blob on the map and it could move much why there
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as a road or approach.
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How long it takes to get downtown that's what sets the limits to an urban area
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rather than political boundaries. Improved means of transportation
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continue to make bigger that blob on the map. People generally agree it would be less
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costly and more efficient for cities to grow vertically instead of horizontally.
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Oh sure. Former city manager of
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about 20 years and when I think about the element of fish and sea I could
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certainly establish beyond any doubt that it's more efficient to have a high
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density population terms sewer lines water lines streets and so on.
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But. Thank goodness as Americans we have.
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Not been controlled by concepts of fish and sea.
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We have. On the contrary been. Growing
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in lines that are often very inefficient. Because
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of the lines of growth which most satisfy our personal needs.
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And desire for comfort. And as we become
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more economically affluent. We can afford to be a little
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wasteful I don't think Americans have ever hesitated to do that when there is some.
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Benefit that they consider more important than saving a few dollars.
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Instead of trying to reverse the trend our technological brains are
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devising speedier means of transportation New York's Bridge Authority plans
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twenty one thousand dollars per car to bring more cars into a city already half
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paralyzed by too many cars that nobody plans to park. San Francisco's
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Bay Area plans a billion dollar transit system that is sure to force
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rebuilding of everything near each station but nobody plans what to rebuild. How
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did things get this way. Well American cities towns and suburbs used to follow a
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fairly natural pattern of growth as the build up area expanded political and
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economic interdependence was recognized and there was an extension consolidation
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an amalgamation. But in the 1920s this trend slowed down just of the
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time when the automobile was making it easier to live outside the city. In fact
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land development came so fast the city couldn't keep up. New neighborhoods and
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subdivisions elected to remain separate from the core city either continuing under a
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township form of government or incorporating as villages or cities.
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Satellite units started to ring our cities often competing with one another
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and with the mother city poor the big industrial taxpayer. Many could see
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that this fragmentation was harmful and some attempts were made over the years to
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change the rules of annexation University of Michigan political science professor Arthur
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Brummagem says despite efforts in the state legislature a little change has been affected.
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We have to remember that Michigan has a very old
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system of annexation and take home over 15000
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population. They cannot force any an exaggeration.
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The only way they can get an annexation is if people in an area seek an
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examination and file a petition and have a vote held on water or not
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they want to annex to the study. People in the area
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seeking an examination can vote yes or they can vote no. For
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instance when I was on the city council here in an arbor we handle a
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little area on the south side of the study and they voted by
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very slender margin of something like 34 to 32 that they didn't
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want to be annexed to the city of Ann Arbor. Well later there was an argument about the
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vote and circuit court ruled that the vote should have been 32 to
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31. And so they were annexed. It is
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it is a law of sovereign self-determination on the part of
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the area that wants an examination they can say yes or they can say no.
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This is part of the self-determination I was talking about. Now we've had in the
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legislature for five years attempts to bring the process of an
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examination under some kind of feasibility review by a state boundary
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commission and we have no legislation on that
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subject yet we're still under the same moral principles that we've had for
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many decades. So far as an exemption is concerned the recent Boundary Commission
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legislation applies only to new municipal corporation and it
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applies only to consolidations which is very remote. So that
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instead of getting the House bill dealt with an exaggeration
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as well as incorporation all we have in the Senate bill which deals only with
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incorporation and contamination. So that is an
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exaggeration is concerned where we're right where we started from decades ago.
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A new boundary commission might make some difference.
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You see it's quite a game and exaggeration and cooperation because
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up until the present time some people in an area got out a petition for an
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examination. Other groups could get out a petition to incorporate their area
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and we had what we used to call a race to the county courthouse to see what he had be
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annexed or what he would incorporate. Well I think the state boundary commission
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is going to slow up that process. The race to the courthouse it's not going
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to have anything to say however about an exaggeration You'll still go on in the
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same way and talk of incorporation usually starts with the
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need for services.
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The basic requirements for water sewers roads police and fire protection. The
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township form of government is limited in what it can provide its essential tax
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collecting agency for schools in the county and then forming a separate unit of government
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is appealing because of the local control of taxation for these services the basic
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doctrine of Home Rule.
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Well this is a sticky situation about. About Home Rule.
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Once you have I wound up people over a period of many
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decades now. It's about six decades
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to voluntarily incorporate themselves as a community.
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You're not going to be able to escape from certain
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fundamental American political ideas not what are those. Well I think
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basically it comes down to two or three of them. We have
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the authority to create a government. And having created that government
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we have the power to run it. And a lot of this business of the power to run it
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was to make certain that a rural state legislature wouldn't
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intervene and write special charters or reparation acts about individual cities
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so that it was a protective doctrine. And
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beyond that was what you might call a service phenomenon that many of
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these satellite corporations weren't too interested in politics in the in the
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old sense they wanted certain services and and if they
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got them by a nonpartisan system and by a city manager and
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and however they got them that's what they wanted.
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No partisan politics no elected chief executive but a city manager form of
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government in a sense a functional form of government to provide the vital services.
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The trouble comes when many new communities discover their tax base is too small to provide
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these vital services. Some other agency has to step in.
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Some turn to special districts others turn to the county government in
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Michigan the county was not structured to provide these services some special state legislation was
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required. Oakland County is a good example. The southern part of the county adjacent to
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Detroit experience rapid growth following World War 2. The chairman of Oakland County's Board
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of auditors Daniel T Murphy explains.
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It was evident that there was a
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great need and ultimate demand for a source
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not surface water source but sanitary sewers.
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It was also pretty evident that there wasn't any of those Missa palaces it was solvent enough at that time to put in their own
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sewer system. Reasons being is that if you put in your
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own sewer system it means the building of a plant
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sewage has to be processed and then has to be taken and moved away
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after it's processed and this kind of operation costs millions of dollars and
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no one local unit of government solves Oakland County at that time was in a position to do
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this.
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It then became pretty evident to Oakland County that
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some larger agency of government had to step in and in the early 50s this was done. And
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as you may recall it took a bit of legislation in Lansing
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before the county was permitted to move into the what we now call the Department of Public Works.
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Now we see something like the completion of this cycle with the aid of an
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agency representing several smaller communities the offspring turned again
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to the Mother City city of Detroit one county worked out of contract
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contracts worked out.
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They then build the evergreen in a Farmington interceptors which were two large sanitary
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sewer interceptors and.
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And.
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Expediency and the result with which this was done speaks for
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itself the city of Southfield and its expansion. Farmington and its expansion West Bloomfield
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Bloomfield townships with now sanitary sewers going through all of that area and the
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subdivisions being put in with the sewer lines already and is indicative of what I what this
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kind of cooperative effort brings about.
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Mr Murphy says this contractor will arrangement has many advantages not only the new
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communities have turned to it.
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Ten years ago if somebody had said to the city a particular edict in Detroit waters it would have somebody would
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said Woody you're crazy but it's necessary. Water is in
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short demand it's becoming more polluted and it takes a
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tremendous plant to come up with with enough water to supply communities.
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There again it's a contractual relationship between local units of government to
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This program has been transcribed using automated software tools, made possible through a collaboration between the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Pop Up Archive. Please note that no automated transcription is perfect nor is it intended to replace human transcription labor. If you would like to contribute corrections to this transcript, please contact MITH at mith@umd.edu.