Bullhead City, the city of Tolleson, and the city of Brea in the United States and Lagos de Moreno in Jalisco, Mexico, undertook a Resource Cities partnership to improve service delivery to Lagos de Moreno’s citizens. By joining efforts, these partners successfully devised innovative strategies for implementing technical support activities in water and wastewater, sanitation, and administration and finance. Lagos de Moreno made some initial improvements in the area of financial management. For example, the municipality placed a new municipal financial reporting system in the form of a touch screen computer outside City Hall. By accessing this system, which is unique to Lagos de Moreno, citizens can learn about the use of municipal funds and operations. To improve municipal collections, the municipality opened a 24-hour cashier’s office where citizens can pay police fines, water bills, property taxes, and other fees. The municipality also made considerable advances in the Human Resource Department through the creation of 24 basic operations manuals for municipal departments.
Using innovative technology, Lagos de Moreno implemented a significant energy and cost savings program in public lighting. The city procured a computerized system to track maintenance needs and can now pinpoint the exact location of newly acquired streetlights, replacing high-energy consumption ones. Similarly, the municipality adopted recommendations regarding the environmental impact of solid waste dumps and instituted a landfill operation. Highlights of the accomplishments in the water department include the implementation of measures to improve sanitary conditions and reduce pollution in water storage tanks and installation of macro metering in all municipal wells.
In addressing public safety issues, the municipal government worked with community groups to design and implement crime reduction programs. Exposure to crime-fighting efforts in U.S. partner cities, such as community-policing programs, led to improved collaboration between the municipality and its Community Advisory Committee, and the adoption of new police operations to combat criminal activity.