Centralised decentralisation: The strings we do not see, and what managing Tema has taught me about local power

Substantive work on these roads, including stretches that read to a resident as ordinary local repair, must be coordinated with the Ministry of Roads and Highways and its Department of Urban Roads, and the funding usually sits above the level at which the Assembly can act alone.

An MMDCE elected under any of these three models would inherit an administration whose head is not the Assembly’s employee, a finance department whose command line runs to the Controller and Accountant-General, roads whose delivery depends on coordination outside the Assembly structures, sector departments whose employees answer elsewhere, procurement thresholds and a fiscal calendar that gate independent action, and a composite plan the Assembly does not truly command.

The special rates provision is one of the few places in our statutes where the community’s own priority is treated as a legitimate source of local action.