What is a community information district?
TL;DR: Community information districts are special districts that are set up with a specific mandate to serve the information needs of local communities.
American cities are almost constantly operating under a wide range of often competing economic and social pressures. The obligation to provide local residents with services they want or need frequently bumps up against the seemingly perpetual lack of available funding for those services. Local governments create special service districts on order to deal with these competing pressures and address the needs of the community when other means prove ineffective.
According to Wikipedia, special service districts (also known simply as “special districts”) are “independent, special-purpose governmental units that exist separately from, and with substantial administrative and fiscal independence from, general purpose local governments such as county, municipal, and township governments and that are formed to perform a single function or a set of related functions.”
Communities come together to form special districts when there is a public need for a particular service. Individuals within the designated geographic area are assessed a fee to support that special service. There are currently more than 30,000 special districts in the United States, but none of them are set up to meet the news and information needs of communities. That’s where the term “Community Information District” comes in.
Community Information Districts, or CiDs, are special districts that are set up with the specific goal of serving the information needs of a particular geographic area. Because special districts are not limited to municipal borders and city limits, a single CiD can provide information services to (and draw revenue from) several municipalities. This can be especially useful in areas where a single community is actually made up of multiple towns, similar to the way regional high schools accept students from surrounding neighborhoods, regardless of their municipal designation.
