A town council , city council or municipal council is a form of local government for small municipalities .
65-485: Usage of the term varies under different jurisdictions. In 2002, 49 urban district councils and 26 town commissioners were redesignated as 75 town councils as a tier of local government below the county council. Five additional local authorities retained the higher status as borough councils. All 80 second-tier municipal authorities were abolished under the Local Government Reform Act 2014 , with effect at
130-743: A Group Representation Constituency (GRC), a Single Member Constituency (SMC), or a collection of neighbouring GRCs and SMCs controlled by the same political party. The Members of Parliament head the town councils of their constituencies. Town councils boundaries do not correspond to new town boundaries; different parts of the same HDB town may be managed by different town councils. Urban and rural districts (Ireland) Urban and rural districts were divisions of administrative counties in Ireland created in 1899. These local government areas elected urban district councils (UDCs) and rural district councils (RDCs) respectively which shared responsibilities with
195-421: A city . However, this is often abbreviated simply to mayor, especially where the town was historically a borough or city, such as Lewes or Ely . In Scotland , the term ' provost ' is commonly used to designate the leader of the town council. Historically the term 'town council' was used for the governing body of a municipal borough until the 1972 Act . In Wales , where the lowest tier of local government
260-817: A county council . They were established when all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland , both urban and rural districts were abolished in 1973. In the Republic of Ireland , which had left the United Kingdom in 1922 as the Irish Free State , rural districts were abolished in the Irish Free State in 1925, except in County Dublin, where they were abolished in 1930. Urban district councils continued until 2002, when they were replaced by town councils . These were abolished in turn in 2014, resulting in
325-519: A social welfare function . Instead of giving actual numbers over different bundles, ordinal utilities are only the rankings of utilities received from different bundles of goods or services. For example, ordinal utility could tell that having two ice creams provide a greater utility to individuals in comparison to one ice cream but could not tell exactly how much extra utility received by the individual. Ordinal utility, it does not require individuals to specify how much extra utility he or she received from
390-605: A city form of government but prefer to retain the "town of" in their names. In several communities which have adopted such a government, the official name of the community is "The City known as the Town of..." The legislative body of a legal town in Massachusetts is a town meeting ; the executive board is a board of selectmen . In addition to having the structure of a city with a mayor and council, cities in Massachusetts can enact ordinances, while towns may adopt by-laws, which are subject to
455-416: A consumption set of R + L {\displaystyle \mathbb {R} _{+}^{L}} , and each package x ∈ R + L {\displaystyle x\in \mathbb {R} _{+}^{L}} is a vector containing the amounts of each commodity. For the example, there are two commodities: apples and oranges. If we say apples is the first commodity, and oranges
520-445: A cup of water equal to 1-p. One cannot conclude, however, that the cup of tea is two thirds of the goodness of the cup of juice, because this conclusion would depend not only on magnitudes of utility differences, but also on the "zero" of utility. For example, if the "zero" of utility was located at -40, then a cup of orange juice would be 160 utils more than zero, a cup of tea 120 utils more than zero. Cardinal utility can be considered as
585-415: A cup of water has a utility of 40 utils. With cardinal utility, it can be concluded that the cup of orange juice is better than the cup of tea by exactly the same amount by which the cup of tea is better than the cup of water. Formally, this means that if a person has a cup of tea, he or she would be willing to take any bet with a probability, p, greater than .5 of getting a cup of juice, with a risk of getting
650-413: A good's marginal utility is positive, additional consumption of it increases utility; if zero, the consumer is satiated and indifferent about consuming more; if negative, the consumer would pay to reduce his consumption. Rational individuals only consume additional units of goods if it increases the marginal utility. However, the law of diminishing marginal utility means an additional unit consumed brings
715-445: A lower marginal utility than that brought by the previous unit consumed. For example, drinking one bottle of water makes a thirsty person satisfied; as the consumption of water increases, he may feel begin to feel bad which causes the marginal utility to decrease to zero or even become negative. Furthermore, this is also used to analyze progressive taxes as the greater taxes can result in the loss of utility. Marginal rate of substitution
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#1732898057613780-484: A manner that alternative a is assigned a number greater than alternative b if and only if the individual prefers alternative a to alternative b . In this situation someone who selects the most preferred alternative is necessarily also selecting the alternative that maximizes the associated utility function. Suppose James has utility function U = x y {\displaystyle U={\sqrt {xy}}} such that x {\displaystyle x}
845-416: A positive linear transformation (multiplying by a positive number, and adding some other number); however, both utility functions represent the same preferences. When cardinal utility is assumed, the magnitude of utility differences is treated as an ethically or behaviorally significant quantity. For example, suppose a cup of orange juice has utility of 120 "utils", a cup of tea has a utility of 80 utils, and
910-567: A single tier only of local government in the Republic of Ireland . Urban districts and rural districts were created in 1898 by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898 based on the urban sanitary districts created by the Public Health (Ireland) Act 1878 , and the suburban townships adjacent to Dublin city . Urban districts had powers greater than towns with town commissioners but less than
975-413: A utility function ranks preferences concerning a set of goods and services. Gérard Debreu derived the conditions required for a preference ordering to be representable by a utility function. For a finite set of alternatives, these require only that the preference ordering is complete (so the individual is able to determine which of any two alternatives is preferred or that they are indifferent), and that
1040-462: Is u (nothing) = 0, u (1 apple) = 1, u (1 orange) = 2, u (1 apple and 1 orange) = 5, u (2 apples) = 2 and u (2 oranges) = 4. Then this consumer prefers 1 orange to 1 apple, but prefers one of each to 2 oranges. In micro-economic models, there are usually a finite set of L commodities, and a consumer may consume an arbitrary amount of each commodity. This gives
1105-401: Is a function from choices to the real numbers: which assigns a real number to every outcome in a way that represents the agent's preferences over simple lotteries. Using the four assumptions mentioned above, the agent will prefer a lottery L 2 {\displaystyle L_{2}} to a lottery L 1 {\displaystyle L_{1}} if and only if, for
1170-502: Is a major concept in welfare economics . While preferences are the conventional foundation of choice theory in microeconomics , it is often convenient to represent preferences with a utility function . Let X be the consumption set , the set of all mutually-exclusive baskets the consumer could conceivably consume. The consumer's utility function u : X → R {\displaystyle u\colon X\to \mathbb {R} } ranks each possible outcome in
1235-399: Is indeed proportional to log of income.) The first important use of the expected utility theory was that of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern , who used the assumption of expected utility maximization in their formulation of game theory . In finding the probability-weighted average of the utility from each possible outcome: Von Neumann and Morgenstern addressed situations in which
1300-558: Is known as a community , the Community Council may unilaterally declare itself to be a Town Council, but this has the same status as a Community Council. Township councils in Ontario play a similar role as city councils in cities for smaller or low tier municipalities. Directly elected every four years, the number of councillors vary depending on the size of their municipalities. The councillors powers and responsibilities are governed by
1365-423: Is possible for rational preferences not to be representable by a utility function. An example is lexicographic preferences which are not continuous and cannot be represented by a continuous utility function. Economists distinguish between total utility and marginal utility. Total utility is the utility of an alternative, an entire consumption bundle or situation in life. The rate of change of utility from changing
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#17328980576131430-448: Is preferred over B. It was recognized that utility could not be measured or observed directly, so instead economists devised a way to infer relative utilities from observed choice. These 'revealed preferences', as termed by Paul Samuelson , were revealed e.g. in people's willingness to pay: Utility is assumed to be correlative to Desire or Want. It has been argued already that desires cannot be measured directly, but only indirectly, by
1495-430: Is the number of apples and y {\displaystyle y} is the number of chocolates. Alternative A has x = 9 {\displaystyle x=9} apples and y = 16 {\displaystyle y=16} chocolates; alternative B has x = 13 {\displaystyle x=13} apples and y = 13 {\displaystyle y=13} chocolates. Putting
1560-417: Is the slope of the indifference curve, which measures how much an individual is willing to switch from one good to another. Using a mathematic equation, M R S = − d x 2 / d x 1 {\displaystyle MRS=-\operatorname {d} \!x_{2}/\operatorname {d} \!x_{1}} keeping U ( x 1 , x 2 ) constant. Thus, MRS is how much an individual
1625-424: Is willing to pay for consuming a greater amount of x 1 . MRS is related to marginal utility. The relationship between marginal utility and MRS is: Expected utility theory deals with the analysis of choices among risky projects with multiple (possibly multidimensional) outcomes. The St. Petersburg paradox was first proposed by Nicholas Bernoulli in 1713 and solved by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738, although
1690-470: The Municipal Act . Manitoba town council members serve primarily as a policy and direction board for the community. They consist of five to seven members with the head of council being the mayor or reeve . Indiana town council members serve as both the executive and legislative branches for small communities incorporated as towns within the state. They consist of three or five members, depending upon
1755-489: The 2014 Irish local elections . There are currently seven town councils in Belize . Each town council consists of a mayor and a number of councillors, who are directly elected in municipal elections every three years. Town councils in Belize are responsible for a range of functions, including street maintenance and lighting, drainage, refuse collection, public cemeteries, infrastructure, parks and playgrounds. In England , since
1820-527: The Local Government Act 1972 , "town council" is the specific name for a civil parish council which has declared itself by resolution to be a town council. If another type of local council, such as a district authority, covers a single town (such as Luton or Stevenage ) then the council is often a 'borough council': borough status is however conferred at the discretion of the Crown . Civil parishes are
1885-662: The municipal boroughs preserved by the Municipal Corporations (Ireland) Act 1840 or created subsequently. This followed a similar creation in England and Wales under the Local Government Act 1894 . The rural and urban districts in Northern Ireland were abolished in 1973 under the Local Government (Boundaries) Act (Northern Ireland) 1971 , and replaced with a system of unitary districts . The Irish Free State established in 1922 (which became Ireland in 1937) continued
1950-432: The optimal attainable value of a given utility function, which depends on the prices of the goods and the income or wealth level that the individual possesses. One use of the indirect utility concept is the notion of the utility of money. The (indirect) utility function for money is a nonlinear function that is bounded and asymmetric about the origin. The utility function is concave in the positive region, representing
2015-428: The structure of local government which had been in place under United Kingdom law. Rural districts outside of County Dublin were abolished in 1925, and in County Dublin in 1930. The areas of former rural districts continue to be used to define electoral geography such as Dáil constituencies . Changes to urban districts: The above changes left a total of 49 urban districts in being, which continued unchanged into
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2080-400: The 1990s. Numerous changes to boundaries with adjoining local authorities were also made over the years. Urban districts were renamed as "towns" under the Local Government Act 2001 . These were in turn abolished in 2014 under the Local Government Reform Act 2014 . Utility In economics , utility is a measure of the satisfaction that a certain person has from a certain state of
2145-624: The General Law Village Act (Act 3) of 1895. Village councils consist of elected officials, including a village president, trustees, clerk, and treasurer. In New Hampshire , the Town Council is an elected body which serves as the legislative and executive body of the town. The town is governed by a charter , which is allowed under the home rule provision of the New Hampshire Constitution (Pt I, Art. 39) and Title III of
2210-603: The New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated. The charter for a Town Council must meet the following requirements of RSA 49-D:3 I. (a) – (e) and all other applicable laws. The basic notion of home rule in New Hampshire is that local communities are not allowed to supersede the authority specifically granted to them by the state. The Official Ballot Town Council is a variant form of the Town Council. In
2275-611: The Official Ballot Town Council is required by law to specify specifically: The charter also must specify whether a 2 ⁄ 3 or 3 ⁄ 5 majority vote is required to approve bonds or notes, with the default being 2 ⁄ 3 . The Palestinian National Authority established village councils to serve as local administrations and service providers for Palestinian villages and small towns. Village councils are also referred to as D-level municipalities. In Singapore, town councils are in charge of maintaining
2340-489: The Official Ballot form of government, the town council is vested with the limited authority to vote on all matters not voted on by official ballot. The authority and restrictions on the Official Ballot town council is the same as the Town Council, except with respect to those matters specified to be voted on by official ballot. Also, the council decides what is placed on the ballot, not the registered voters. The charter of
2405-501: The Swiss mathematician Gabriel Cramer proposed taking the expectation of a square-root utility function of money in an 1728 letter to N. Bernoulli. D. Bernoulli argued that the paradox could be resolved if decision-makers displayed risk aversion and argued for a logarithmic cardinal utility function. (Analysis of international survey data during the 21st century has shown that insofar as utility represents happiness, as for utilitarianism , it
2470-428: The above example, it would only be possible to say that juice is preferred to tea to water. Thus, ordinal utility utilizes comparisons, such as "preferred to", "no more", "less than", etc. If a function u ( x ) {\displaystyle u(x)} is ordinal and non-negative, it is equivalent to the function u ( x ) 2 {\displaystyle u(x)^{2}} , because taking
2535-669: The approval of the Attorney General . City ordinances are presumed to be legal unless challenged and set aside in court. See Massachusetts Government . In Michigan , there are 257 incorporated villages that are governed by village councils, which is a form of weak–mayor administration. Michigan does not use "town" as a defined municipality, and villages are the lowest-level form of incorporated municipality. Villages are distinct from cities in that they share certain duties with their surrounding township and are not completely autonomous. Guidelines for village governments are defined in
2600-423: The assumption that utility can be measured by quantifiable characteristics, such as height, weight, temperature, etc. Neoclassical economics has largely retreated from using cardinal utility functions as the basis of economic behavior. A notable exception is in the context of analyzing choice with conditions of risk (see below ). Sometimes cardinal utility is used to aggregate utilities across persons, to create
2665-567: The combinations of commodity X and Y along the same indifference curve are regarded indifferently by individuals, which means all the combinations along an indifference curve result in the same value of utility. Individual utility and social utility can be construed as the value of a utility function and a social welfare function respectively. When coupled with production or commodity constraints, by some assumptions these functions can be used to analyze Pareto efficiency , such as illustrated by Edgeworth boxes in contract curves . Such efficiency
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2730-719: The common areas of Housing and Development Board (HDB) flats and estates, such as the common corridors, void decks , lifts, water tanks, external lighting and the open spaces surrounding the estates. They are regulated under the Town Councils Act ;( Cap. 329A, 2000 Rev. Ed. ). The rationale was to delegate the duties of estate management to the members of parliament in addition to their existing responsibilities. They would also gain management experience and be accountable to their district's resident voters. Town councils boundaries are drawn based on electoral districts boundaries. A town council area can consist of
2795-402: The consumption set. If the consumer strictly prefers x to y or is indifferent between them, then u ( x ) ≥ u ( y ) {\displaystyle u(x)\geq u(y)} . For example, suppose a consumer's consumption set is X = {nothing, 1 apple,1 orange, 1 apple and 1 orange, 2 apples, 2 oranges}, and his utility function
2860-438: The function itself, and which plot the combination of commodities that an individual would accept to maintain a given level of satisfaction. Combining indifference curves with budget constraints allows for derivation of individual demand curves . A diagram of a general indifference curve is shown below (Figure 1). The vertical axes and the horizontal axes represent an individual's consumption of commodity Y and X respectively. All
2925-566: The function needs to be defined for fractional apples and oranges too. One function that would fit these numbers is u ( x apples , x oranges ) = x apples + 2 x oranges + 2 x apples x oranges . {\displaystyle u(x_{\text{apples}},x_{\text{oranges}})=x_{\text{apples}}+2x_{\text{oranges}}+2x_{\text{apples}}x_{\text{oranges}}.} Preferences have three main properties : Assume an individual has two choices, A and B. By ranking
2990-401: The individual prefers bundle A to bundle C. (If a ≥ b and b ≥ c , then a ≥ c for all ( a , b , c )). If a bundle A contains all the goods that a bundle B contains, but A also contains more of at least one good than B, then the individual prefers A over B. If, for example, bundle A = {1 apple,2 oranges}, and bundle B = {1 apple,1 orange}, then A
3055-408: The most local level in the local government system. The higher levels are district , unitary and county . However town councils are not subordinate in democratic accountability to those higher levels, but to the electorate of their civil parish area. The chair of a town council is entitled to be styled as "town mayor". This term contrasts with simply "mayor", which means the mayor of a borough or
3120-484: The outcomes of choices are not known with certainty, but have probabilities associated with them. A notation for a lottery is as follows: if options A and B have probability p and 1 − p in the lottery, we write it as a linear combination: More generally, for a lottery with many possible options: where ∑ i p i = 1 {\displaystyle \sum _{i}p_{i}=1} . By making some reasonable assumptions about
3185-467: The outward phenomena which they cause: and that in those cases with which economics is mainly concerned the measure is found by the price which a person is willing to pay for the fulfillment or satisfaction of his desire. Utility functions , expressing utility as a function of the amounts of the various goods consumed, are treated as either cardinal or ordinal , depending on whether they are or are not interpreted as providing more information than simply
3250-575: The phenomenon of diminishing marginal utility . The boundedness represents the fact that beyond a certain amount money ceases being useful at all, as the size of any economy at that time is itself bounded. The asymmetry about the origin represents the fact that gaining and losing money can have radically different implications both for individuals and businesses. The non-linearity of the utility function for money has profound implications in decision-making processes: in situations where outcomes of choices influence utility by gains or losses of money, which are
3315-459: The preference order is transitive . If the set of alternatives is not finite (for example because even if the number of goods is finite, the quantity chosen can be any real number on an interval) there exists a continuous utility function representing a consumer's preferences if and only if the consumer's preferences are complete, transitive and continuous. Utility can be represented through sets of indifference curve , which are level curves of
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#17328980576133380-437: The preferred bundle of goods or services in comparison to other bundles. They are only required to tell which bundles they prefer. When ordinal utilities are used, differences in utils (values assumed by the utility function) are treated as ethically or behaviorally meaningless: the utility index encodes a full behavioral ordering between members of a choice set, but tells nothing about the related strength of preferences . For
3445-459: The properties of the agent's preference relation over 'simple lotteries', which are lotteries with just two options. Writing B ⪯ A {\displaystyle B\preceq A} to mean 'A is weakly preferred to B' ('A is preferred at least as much as B'), the axioms are: Axioms 3 and 4 enable us to decide about the relative utilities of two assets or lotteries. In more formal language: A von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function
3510-520: The quantity of one good consumed is termed the marginal utility of that good. Marginal utility therefore measures the slope of the utility function with respect to the changes of one good. Marginal utility usually decreases with consumption of the good, the idea of "diminishing marginal utility". In calculus notation, the marginal utility of good X is M U x = ∂ U ∂ X {\displaystyle MU_{x}={\frac {\partial U}{\partial X}}} . When
3575-569: The rank ordering of preferences among bundles of goods, such as information concerning the strength of preferences. Cardinal utility states that the utilities obtained from consumption can be measured and ranked objectively and are representable by numbers. There are fundamental assumptions of cardinal utility. Economic agents should be able to rank different bundles of goods based on their own preferences or utilities, and also sort different transitions of two bundles of goods. A cardinal utility function can be transformed to another utility function by
3640-449: The second, then the consumption set is X = R + 2 {\displaystyle X=\mathbb {R} _{+}^{2}} and u (0, 0) = 0, u (1, 0) = 1, u (0, 1) = 2, u (1, 1) = 5, u (2, 0) = 2, u (0, 2) = 4 as before. For u to be a utility function on X , however, it must be defined for every package in X , so now
3705-710: The square is an increasing monotone (or monotonic) transformation . This means that the ordinal preference induced by these functions is the same (although they are two different functions). In contrast, if u ( x ) {\displaystyle u(x)} is cardinal, it is not equivalent to u ( x ) 2 {\displaystyle u(x)^{2}} . In order to simplify calculations, various alternative assumptions have been made concerning details of human preferences, and these imply various alternative utility functions such as: Most utility functions used for modeling or theory are well-behaved. They are usually monotonic and quasi-concave. However, it
3770-445: The town council hold an organising meeting, where they elect a president to set future agendas and act as an official spokesman for the town or as liaison between the town and state and county government. Indiana town councils work in conjunction with an elected town clerk , who manages the day-to-day business of the municipal government. As an elected official, the town clerk is solely executive in function and operates independently of
3835-520: The town council. But the council has final say on budgets which clerks depend upon to operate. In addition to a clerk, the council can authorise the hiring of other staff to run the operations of government, including law enforcement officers, utility workers, park and recreation employees and town managers . These employees serve at the pleasure of the council. Town councils in Massachusetts are essentially city councils in towns which have adopted
3900-477: The town's population. Unlike some states, Indiana councilmembers must declare a political party affiliation, if any, when they file to run for office. Upon election in November, they are sworn in before 1 January of the following year, where they serve a four-year term. There are no state term limits affecting how many times a candidate may run for re-election to office. The first meeting after an election, members of
3965-458: The two choices, one and only one of the following relationships is true: an individual strictly prefers A (A > B); an individual strictly prefers B (B>A); an individual is indifferent between A and B (A = B). Either a ≥ b OR b ≥ a (OR both) for all ( a , b ) Individuals' preferences are consistent over bundles. If an individual prefers bundle A to bundle B, and prefers bundle B to bundle C, then it can be assumed that
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#17328980576134030-456: The utility function characterizing that agent, the expected utility of L 2 {\displaystyle L_{2}} is greater than the expected utility of L 1 {\displaystyle L_{1}} : Of all the axioms, independence is the most often discarded. A variety of generalized expected utility theories have arisen, most of which omit or relax the independence axiom. An indirect utility function gives
4095-403: The values x , y {\displaystyle x,y} into the utility function yields 9 × 16 = 12 {\displaystyle {\sqrt {9\times 16}}=12} for alternative A and 13 × 13 = 13 {\displaystyle {\sqrt {13\times 13}}=13} for B, so James prefers alternative B. In general economic terms,
4160-423: The way choices behave, von Neumann and Morgenstern showed that if an agent can choose between the lotteries, then this agent has a utility function such that the desirability of an arbitrary lottery can be computed as a linear combination of the utilities of its parts, with the weights being their probabilities of occurring. This is termed the expected utility theorem . The required assumptions are four axioms about
4225-408: The world. Over time, the term has been used in at least two different meanings. The relationship between these two kinds of utility functions is highly controversial among both economists and ethicists . Consider a set of alternatives among which a person has a preference ordering. A utility function represents that ordering if it is possible to assign a real number to each alternative in such
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