An old adage about not judging a book (in this case, a magazine) by its cover is not true. You can tell quite a bit from a cover, and readers can make instantaneous judgments on whether to turn the page to see what's going on inside. So I hope more experienced managers don’t toss the January/February 2014 magazine in the trash when they see a young family on the cover.

Retirement and retirement strategies are inevitably ahead for most people and most local governments. The January/February cover story delves into answering the question: What’s happening to the compensation package?

For certain, local governments are making changes to employee retirement benefits and pensions: a graphic in the article shows that 42 percent of local governments made changes in 2013—and will not be providing as much retirement income in the future as they once did. The changes will impact those new to the workforce and early in their local government careers, thus impacting young families and how they strategize for the future.

ICMA’s 2013 Membership Survey showed that “council-manager relations” is a topic members are extremely interested in. Good news! PM readers can look for the council-manager relations department, which will continue to be published quarterly during the coming year (March issue will be the next). This will make the third year that it has been part of the magazine’s contents.

Also looking ahead for 2014, I’d like to remind PM readers who might be searching for examples of leading practices from other communities that they need look no further—or at the very least should consider putting PM on their search list—because each issue of the magazine includes leading practices. In fact, one year’s worth of issues can include articles from more than some 150 local government managers. I hope, as a print or online reader, you will keep turning the page.