It seems everything is changing at a breakneck speed these days. Two-year-old cell phones are outdated. You can turn on the television or turn off the lights with Alexa. Autonomous cars are already being tested on city streets in Canadian cities.

The one constant is change, and hardly a sector of our society is untouched – except for municipal governments, some pundits would claim.

Not so fast.

Local government is not immune. In fact, there are huge changes that have happened and are going to happen in the way your city or town is governed and operated.

I began my career in politics as an elected official in 1995, and have lived through seven municipal elections - three for city council and four for mayor.

During that time, while cars and computers and cell phones were changing rapidly, municipal politics have undergone their own transformation.

The biggest change has been in the philosophy of governing and leading at city hall. The most forward-thinking communities have shifted away from day-to-day operational issues and are instead focusing on higher-level strategic planning directions and building road-maps for the future.

Local government leaders shouldn’t cringe when we see those changes on the horizon, but rather embrace the advancements and improvements in local governance.

Back in the 1980s and 90s, most city councils and councillors were primarily concerned about “retail politics.” You worried about garbage collection, snowplowing, or getting involved with disputes over a fence between neighbours. But that has changed (for the most part) and those sorts of issues are better left for senior staff to solve. Only in the rarest of cases do those sorts of issues end up in council chambers.

That’s a good thing, because inevitably when it does end up before elected officials, the outcome is predictable – the decisions usually become political, not regulation or policy based. It is then that you see decisions of senior staff, who might be professional engineers or urban planners, overturned because the gallery is full of angry residents.

Progressive local governments in the 2010s now concentrate more on strategic planning--what your community is going to look like years from now.

The focus of local leaders should be on creating a robust civic environment where industry and business want to move to your community. The reality is, however, that a lot of that can’t be accomplished overnight.

For example, a dozen or so communities may be vying for the next great employer to move to their town. To attract employers in today’s competitive environment, municipalities need to realistically understand their assets and weaknesses.

Business requirements of communities today include such basic economic foundations as high-speed Internet, fibre optic communications, available serviceable (or serviced) industrial land, and strong infrastructure. All those building blocks take time for municipalities to acquire and develop.

Municipalities rarely used to talk about those sorts of things, but now you must.

The best employers know they are the best employers and they have high expectations from a potential community. They want that city or town to be a partner in their success, so smart communities have realized that you have to have all those business tools in place long before the decision-making process starts.

The other big change is in the city staff itself.

There was a time that the chief financial officer or the city clerk may have started with an entry level job and hung around long enough to work their way up to be a department head. Now, the head of the public works department has probably never been on the end of a shovel. The person who is in charge of Human Resources, or Health and Safety, or the finance department, has a degree or degrees in that field–and may have migrated over from the private sector.

However, there are still elected officials that cling to old philosophies about what makes up a good city councillor. Higher level thinking is outside their comfort zone and they are not comfortable talking about stretch goals, planning 10 years out, or capital asset management plans. You can often see a real schism developing inside a council chamber.

Mayors have lots of things to manage, including people, and this is one of them. A tale of two cities, as it were.

Sure it creates some challenges, depending on who makes up the council of the day. But right now, more than ever, I think you have two kinds of elected officials and two kinds of councils.

On one hand you have councils that are vision-oriented and planning for the future. These are the true governance councils. Yet Canada has many councils that are only worried about small operational issues that are most certainly best left to staff to figure out.

That’s where real leadership comes in – making sure you have great staff to look after the day-to-day operational issues that keep people happy and get them the services they expect and deserve from their local tax dollars.

Equally important to understand, however, is that that kind of operational effectiveness then lets council members concentrate on strategies and planning and making sure the operations people have all the tools they need to do their job, not only now, but 10 years from now.

Developing a vibrant community vision of the future, and the strategic plan and the resources needed to achieve those goals, is what great leaders deliver for their town or city.

That is why muscular leadership in our city halls is so crucial to building, developing and running successful communities today.