LEAD 6543 Module 4 Policy Implementation and Values Analysis Example

From Ordinance to Driveway: Implementing Lead Line Replacement and the Values That Shape It

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD6543: Policy and Governance

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

August 18, 2031

Introduction

The previous paper recommended that Riverford, a composite Ohio city with about 28,000 lead service lines, fund full replacement of private sides publicly under an access ordinance, prioritizing neighborhoods by need. Adopting a policy is not the same as achieving its goals. Implementation research shows that well-designed programs often falter between the decision and the street. This paper traces the chain of actions required to turn the ordinance into completed replacements, tests it against implementation research, identifies where values conflict in daily decisions and proposes safeguards.

The Implementation Chain

A single replacement requires many steps. The council adopts the ordinance and budget; the utility applies for and receives state loans; procurement selects contractors; the utility schedules neighborhoods; outreach staff notify owners and residents and seek consent; where consent is not given, legal staff issue notices under the ordinance; inspectors verify line material; crews excavate and replace both segments; residents receive filters and flushing instructions; inspectors confirm completion; and records are updated for the state. Each step involves different people and organizations, and a delay at any one holds up all that follow.

The Complexity of Joint Action

Pressman and Wildavsky (1984) studied a federal economic development program in Oakland and found that it failed not through opposition but through the sheer number of clearances required from different participants. Even when each participant agreed with the goal and the probability of each clearance was high, the probability of completing all of them on time was low. Riverford's chain has a similar structure: contractors, inspectors, outreach staff, property owners, tenants, the state agency and the council must all act. The lesson is to reduce the number of separate clearances wherever possible and to monitor each link.

Conditions for Effective Implementation

Sabatier and Mazmanian (1980) identified conditions under which statutes are more likely to achieve their objectives, including clear and consistent objectives, a valid causal theory linking actions to outcomes, implementation structured to favor compliance, committed and skilled implementing officials, support from interest groups and sovereigns and stable socioeconomic conditions. Riverford's policy meets several: the objective is clear, the causal link from replacement to reduced exposure is sound and federal rules provide legal structure. Weaker conditions include staff capacity, since the utility has never run a program of this size, and sustained political support over ten years, which could waver with rate increases or a change of mayor.

Street-Level Discretion

Lipsky (2010) showed that public workers who interact directly with citizens, such as caseworkers and police, make policy in practice through the discretion they exercise under heavy workloads and limited resources. In Riverford, outreach workers, inspectors and crew supervisors will make daily choices: how many times to knock on a door before escalating to a legal notice, whether to reschedule a household that missed an appointment, how to treat a tenant whose landlord cannot be reached. These choices determine who is served and when. Without guidance, workers under pressure to meet targets may favor easy cases, which are often owner-occupied homes in more stable neighborhoods.

Values in Daily Decisions

Stone (2012) argued that policy decisions involve contested values such as equity, efficiency, security and liberty, which take different meanings depending on who is speaking. In implementation, these values collide at the level of individual cases. Speed favors scheduling crews where consent is easiest; equity favors persisting in the hardest-to-reach blocks. Respect for property rights favors patience with reluctant owners; health protection favors prompt use of the ordinance. Efficiency favors replacing whole blocks at once; trust favors honoring residents' scheduling requests. The policy does not resolve these conflicts; implementers will, case by case.

Tenants and Absentee Owners

The hardest cases involve tenants and absentee owners. About 58 percent of homes with lead lines are rentals, and the city cannot reach owners of an estimated 12 percent of them through tax records. The ordinance allows replacement after notice, but notice must be legally sufficient, and tenants may fear that construction will lead to rent increases or eviction. Implementation must therefore include legal procedures for unreachable owners, clear assurances to tenants and coordination with tenant organizations, or the program will stall in exactly the neighborhoods it prioritized.

Trust as a Condition

Residents in the most affected neighborhoods have reasons for skepticism about city government, including past experiences with infrastructure projects that disrupted streets for months. If residents distrust the program, they may refuse access, miss appointments or oppose rate increases. Trust is not a background condition but an outcome of how implementation is conducted: whether crews arrive when promised, whether yards are restored, whether residents receive filters and plain-language explanations. Early neighborhoods will shape the program's reputation for the rest of the decade.

Safeguards

The analysis leads to six safeguards. First, combine clearances by bundling inspection, outreach and construction scheduling under a single neighborhood coordinator. Second, set guidance for street-level discretion, for example a standard sequence of three contact attempts, a tenant-language notice and escalation timelines, so equity does not depend on individual workers. Third, track completions by neighborhood priority, not only totals, so workers are rewarded for difficult cases. Fourth, hire outreach workers from affected neighborhoods. Fifth, publish a quarterly public dashboard. Sixth, build staff capacity early by contracting program management support for the first two years.

A Pilot Before Scale

The first year should serve partly as a pilot. Starting in two priority neighborhoods with different characteristics, one mostly owner-occupied and one mostly rental, would let the utility test outreach scripts, consent procedures, contractor coordination and resident communication before expanding. Problems found in the pilot, such as slow legal notices for unreachable owners or confusing filter instructions, can be fixed while the program is small. Pressman and Wildavsky's (1984) analysis suggests that reducing complexity early, before many participants are involved, is far easier than repairing it later.

Sustaining Political Support

A ten-year program will outlast council terms and possibly a mayor. To sustain support, the ordinance should set a schedule and reporting requirements that persist across administrations, rate assistance should protect low-income customers from the increase that could otherwise fuel opposition and early visible results, such as completed blocks with restored sidewalks, should be shared widely. Interest group support from health and community organizations, identified by Sabatier and Mazmanian (1980) as a condition for success, can be maintained through the advisory board proposed earlier.

Conclusion

Implementing Riverford's lead line policy requires a long chain of clearances, each a point of potential delay, and depends on conditions such as staff capacity and sustained political support that are not yet secure. Street-level workers will make daily choices in which equity, speed, property rights, health and trust collide, and tenants and absentee owners present the hardest cases. Bundled clearances, guidance for discretion, equity-based tracking, local hiring, public reporting, early capacity building and durable political commitments can strengthen the weak links. The final paper will present the policy in a brief with an evaluation plan.

References

Lipsky, M. (2010). Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services (30th anniversary expanded ed.). Russell Sage Foundation.

Pressman, J. L., & Wildavsky, A. (1984). Implementation (3rd ed.). University of California Press.

Sabatier, P., & Mazmanian, D. (1980). The implementation of public policy: A framework of analysis. Policy Studies Journal, 8(4), 538-560. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0072.1980.tb01266.x

Stone, D. (2012). Policy paradox: The art of political decision making (3rd ed.). W. W. Norton.