Tarleton MPA Nation

I am an MPA Student at Tarleton.

Here is my post and question:

Taxation

So a a topic that I have been learning on appears to be an anomaly to not only Texas but also to seems just the DFW area.  That is the Crime Control Prevention District.  I lived in the City of Fort Worth from 2007 to 2013.  Fort Worth operates a crime control budget for 2017 is proposed at  $74,884,251.  This money is derived from the 1/2 cent sales tax on purchases made in the City of Fort Worth.  That is nearly $75 million dollars. This is money that comes from a regressive tax that appears to add up substantially.  This is money that is used, especially in Fort Worth for a wide variety of uses from leasing a new helicopter for the police department to funding after school and parenting programs for youth and disadvantaged parent.  Several cities in the area also use this form of taxation for fundraising. If you will pay attention many of the patrol cars on the street today in these communities have a "Funded by CCPD" marking on the trunk.   The definition of what qualifies as a crime control prevention eligible program appears to depend on the city.  Fort Worth seems to have a fairly liberal definition as to qualifications, but funds important programs that may not get the funding if not for it. 

Obviously this sales tax frees up other accounts including General Funds, Police Department Budgets and others.  The observation and accountability of these budgets is by a citizen or appointed community panel that appears to be made up of 5-9 members depending on the city that report to the city council.  

Here is my discussion piece.  If $75 million dollars is pulled separately from the operating budget and is operated as a separate entity for the purpose of the broad subject matter of 'crime control prevention':

1- why are not more cities doing this

2- what pit falls do you potentially see

3- Should there be more knowledge about these tax districts to the citizens as well as input.

Review the Fort Worth budget proposal for 2017 here. 

http://fortworthgov.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=2540&meta_id=299846

C. Aller

 

Hello Tarleton MPA Nation.

The fall semester of the MPA program at Tarleton is off to a robust start. All our class offerings made with over 80 students taking classes from Public Administration to Critical Social Problems. Our students come all walks of public administration environments -- federal government, education, police officers, public works, city management, fire fighters, corrections, nonprofits and NGO employees. We even have a couple private sector folks interested in branching into the public sector. Welcome, all.


We offered 5 online courses and 3 face-to-face. Students are exploring public budgeting, public policy and policy analysis, intergovernmental relations, critical incident management, critical social issues, and intro into public administration.


As you all know, we are in the middle of a presidential campaign. While the candidates themselves create a great deal of political theater, it is the policy issues that I find most germane to the Administrative State.


So, I hope you all start paying attention to what the candidates say about all the policy issues that usually accompany such campaign silliness. However, more often than not, what the candidates talk about, what makes the list of items to be included in the debate circuit, we in public administration will have to deal with the fallout or deal with the process of formulating, negotiating and implementing those very policy initiatives.


Have fun, don't take what the candidates say to serious, especially what they say about each other, focus on the policy issues and ask yourself this question, if I have to deal with the policy issues being debated, how would I go about it?

Dr. G. M. Cox, Chief (Ret)
Asst. Professor
Director, MPA Program

Good morning, Tarleton MPA nation. Wow, it has been a year now since the Master's in Public Administration degree program moved from the College of Business Administration to the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Strategic Studies, Since that time, the program has grown immensely.

Two of our students, one who graduated spring 2016, Dallas Sims, and another that graduates in August, Alan Fourmenten, accomplished graduate papers to complete their degree requirements. Their papers have made practical and real contributions to our citizens and governmental operations. These graduate papers are excellent and I hope they will consider having their papers submitted for publishing in trade journals.

In about a week, on August 6th, the MPA program will have seven students graduate with their MPAs -- six of those will be our Emirati students that transferred in from Western Kentucky University a little over a year ago. These seven students will be a milestone for our program since they will be the first cohort of students who went through our program to graduation. I am very proud of these students. I will have the honor of hooding them at Commencement.

From August of 2015 to now, we have grown from a program of just under 20 students to one with over 75 students. Plus, more students are being admitted every week. This is awesome growth. Our best recruiters are our students. I hope you all take the opportunity to extol the virtues of Tarleton State University and, in particular, the MPA program. I know many students have applied who were first told or our program by one of our current or past students. Please, keep that up.

As our program grows, so too must our cadre of faculty. We have added four (4) adjunct faculty and, hopefully, will be adding another full-time PA professor as of fall 2017 to handle the course load for our ever growing program. Drs. Brian Wish and Coby Pewitt have along with me handled all of the teaching duties over the past year. Starting this fall, Drs. Kathy Rowe and Bill Munn will be assisting. All our PA faculty are Ph.D.s and seasoned professionals in the public administration field.

Currently, our students represent a very broad range of practitioners in PA, nonprofits and NGOs -- we have educators, police officers, fire fighters, assistant city managers, public works personnel, probation, corrections, and administrative personnel from local and state agencies and many, many others in the program. Some are private sector professionals looking to transition into public administration careers.

Fall is approaching quickly. The fall semester will start a week later than usual -- August 29th. This change will also result in changing down the line. Graduation for the fall will, as a result, will be a week later than usual.

The MPA program has a great line-up of courses scheduled for fall. As many of you are already aware, our program is fully online as well as face-to-face. So, a student can mix and match or pursue their Master's online or F2F. I will be teaching MAPA 5311, Intergovernmental Relations; MAPA 5315, Public Budgeting; and, MAPA 5331, Public Policy this fall -- all face-to-face at our Southwest Metro Campus in Fort Worth. The online offerings will be MAPA 5331, MAPA 5300, MAPA 5315, and MAPA 5340, and MAPA 5345. Plus, we have a number of criminal justice courses that are cross-listed and available -- ethics, research methods and statistics. On the CJ courses, I have personally visited with all the profs that teach these courses and they are aware and supportive of PA students taking their classes and allow them to pursue PA topics to fulfill course requirements.

I have some great plans for the MPA program's future -- publishing our own journal for our students' papers to be published in, an annual colloquium for our students to present their papers and inviting visiting scholars to our colloquium just a few example. So, stay tuned.

See you all soon and I hope you are having a great summer.

Dr. G.M. Cox
Assistant Professor
Director, MPA Program

Good morning, Tarleton MPA Nation.

Recently, Dr. del Carmen and I ventured to the United Arab Emirates to network with our growing cadre of Tarleton grads -- with both MPAs and MCJs degrees -- and to, hopefully, create lasting relationships and networks with several UAE universities.

I am extremely glad that I made this trip for a number of reasons. First, I now have a very good idea of the kind of stress our students from UAE must endure to travel back and forth. The flight over was just over 14 hours and the flight back to the States took just over 15 hours.

Second, I saw and experienced what life, if only from a visitor's eyes, is like for them in the UAE. It is a place where modernity meets the sand. The people are gracious and polite, or at least they were to Dr. del Carmen and me, and the country is very tidy. Transportation is modern, multi-modal, and well designed -- they drive on the right like we do. The architecture was amazing with modern, creative building designs blended with traditional middle-eastern. Building is going on everywhere. I actually counted 13 large construction cranes, all in a row, on what appeared to be new construction of high rise buildings in Dubai. Wow! Dubai, is a modern, fast-paced, urban juggernaut. It is has a bustling and hectic pace to it. It seemed to me to have more than one "downtown" center with very tall and dense centers -- it was like having several downtown Dallas's in several areas. It was a sight to see.

Third, we had very productive meetings with  the Ministry of Education, leaders of Zayed University and the University of Modern Science. We hope to create on-going and leading-edge programs between these prestigious institutions and Tarleton.

Finally, I got to see and experience many great things while on our visit. I saw an indoor ski slope. I saw the third largest mosque in the world, Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and actually went inside for a tour and Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi. I experienced traditional Arab and Lebanese food -- most of which was good -- some I did not enjoy. Of course, I saw several huge malls -- one had Ferrari World in it. We were treated to a cruise in the harbor next to Palm Island in Dubai. In short, we experienced a lot in just 6 days.

Our hosts, mostly our students, who by the way, did a great job of both tour guides and liaisons with the various entities and officials we were able to meet. Our sincere thanks to them for making our visit both productive and enjoyable.

From an MPA perspective, several things come to mind. The country is relatively young -- formed in 1971 -- has had rapid and sustained growth. It is not a democracy, but the country seems to be run with the best interests of its citizens in mind. It is an affluent place, which means all kinds of social problems that confront us in the USA are not present in the UAE. However, other challenges await this young country such as a large guest-worker population, dwindling oil supplies and developing technologies that reduce dependence on oil, small size of endogenous Emiratee population and rapid growth of both infrastructure and urban centers. The UAE government is very much focused on futures thinking and strategic planning.

The UAE has one of the most aggressive modernization schedules I have seen. By 2030, the UAE has a goal of 100% autonomous driven vehicles, at least of government vehicles. That is mind-blowing. I wonder if they have any idea of the problems that might accompany this innovation? The USA is trying to grapple with these issues now -- think Google cars, car crashes, breakdowns, traffic law violations, rules that apply to ADVs that might not apply to people driven vehicles, etc.

Glad to be back in the USA, but I, truly, enjoyed my experience in the UAE. Thank you to our students who took such great care of us. By the way, one of our MCJ students had some issues with coming back to Tarleton to receive his Masters in Criminal Justice degree in May 2016 and missed his commencement. So, being the number 1 student focused university in Texas and beyond, Dr. del Carmen donned his regalia, had our student done his cap and gown, and bestowed upon him his MCJ degree -- we believe that is the first MCJ degree, possibly any degree, conferred outside the USA and in the UAE. Awesome to see his family's eyes light up as Dr. del Carmen said the words and gave him his degree.

Dr. G M Cox
Assistant Professor
Director, MPA Program
Tarleton State University

UMANT (Urban Management Assistants of North Texas) Event

Come to Addison’s unique entrepreneurial business incubator, the TreeHouse, for some personal time with influential managers and executives from local governments and governmental organizations. Participants will first sit down to dinner with local execs, then personally meet with each one during a round of “speed interviews.” Exec.Connect is an unparalleled format to gain access to important manager throughout the metro area. Confirmed attendees include: Wes Pierson, City Manager, Addison, Tom Hart, City Manager, Grand Prairie, Anna Doll, Assistant City Manager, Grand Prairie, Jon Fortune, Assistant City Manager, Denton, Bryan Langley, Assistant City Manager/CFO, Denton and Jennifer Fadden, City Manager, Colleyville. Dinner is included in the registration cost. http://umant.com/event-2215837

I hope you all check out this unique opportunity to meet and greet several city managers and assistant city managers relative to public administration.

Dr. G. M. Cox

Assistant Professor

Director, MPA Program

(817) 484-4395

Hello everyone from the land of the Texans -- Tarleton Texans, that is.


Just an update of the MPA program at Tarleton -- we are blowing and growing. Just in April we have had over 10 admissions to the MPA program. Overall, we are above 60 students in the program -- evenly spaced in our online and Face-to-Face courses.

I cannot begin to tell you how impressed I am with the interest in our program, but the quality of those seeking admission to our program is outstanding. We have asst. city managers, asst. chiefs of police, fire fighters, police officers, educators and many more public sector practitioners enrolled and enrolling to receive their master's degree in public administration.


The Tarleton MPA is a top-notch, broad-based solid public administration degree. It is responsive to practitioners' needs and career goals. It is affordable and responsive to our students' needs -- local and distant students alike.


If you know of someone who is thinking about pursuing their master's degree, please consider steering them our way. The MPA is a very versatile comprehensive degree program aimed at the practitioner in the public sector whether it being the local, state or federal government and the nonprofit and NGO practitioners who deliver public service.


We have rolling start dates. Our degree is a 36-hour, non-thesis or thesis track, master's degree. The core of both tracks is made up of ten courses in core PA. The other six hours are designed to allow our students to develop an interest in any number of elective course work or 6 hours in thesis.


If your undergraduate GPA is at least 2.5, we waive the GRE.


You can check out our program at www.Tarleton.edu -- degrees offered for more information.


Dr. G.M. Cox
Asst. Professor and Director,
     MPA Program
Tarleton State University
(817) 484-4395

Good afternoon, Texan MPA students.


Briefly, I want you all to know that the degree plan for the MPA degree is in a state of flux, at least as it reads in the catalog.


My purpose in writing this blog entry is to let you know that the MPA degree is very much a program that focuses on solid public administration core subjects.


That said, the current degree plan, the one we are currently operating under has some course listed different from the MPA that is in the catalog, so please be aware of that when you look at the catalog.


For the most part, we have substituted several courses that really are more cogent and responsive to our current students' needs than the program listed -- it takes the bureaucracy a bit of time to catch up, but it will catch up eventually.

Until then, the primary track for the MPA that we have laid out is:


Core courses (with substitutions indicated):

MAPA 5300, Public Administration
MAPA 5310, Intro to PA, which will be taught as a Public Sector Systems course. However, we will be submitting a course alternative titled Public Sector Systems with a PA prefix soon and this course will be substituted for MAPA 5310 once approved.
CRIJ 5321, Management of Criminal Justice Personnel (this course is substituted for HRMT 5302), which has been moved to a required course -- substituted for MKTG 5303, which may be taken as an elective if this is a class you think would benefit you. The plan is to submit a course created titled, "Public Personnel Administration." Once that class is approved, it will become a required course and CRIJ 5321 will be dropped or cross-listed.
MAPA 5311, Intergovernmental Relations
MAPA 5315,  Public Budgeting (5330, Advanced Public Budgeting can be substituted for 5315 with Director's approval)
MAPA 5322, Ethics (cross-listed with CRIJ 5322)
MAPA 5398, Research Methods (cross-listed with CRIJ 5398 -- must be taken prior to taking MAPA 5307 (cross-listed with CRIJ 5300)
MAPA 5307, Statistics
MAPA 5331, Public Policy
MAPA 5340, PA Capstone


You have a number of great courses available for your 6 hours of electives. However, if you are thesis student, you will not have an option for electives under the 36-hour degree program.


If you have any questions, please give Mrs. Johnson, Program Coordinator (254-986-9106), or me (817-484-4395) a call and we can steer you towards the appropriate course mixes.


Dr. G. M. Cox
Assistant Professor
Director, MPA Program
Tarleton State University