This paper explores the perspective of local governments on the neighborhood-based governance entities being developed by these initiatives. It asks to what extent local government sees such efforts as appropriate responses to neighborhood needs, interests, and circumstances, or to what extent they might be seen as intruding into the representative and provisionary functions of local government. Public officials tend to view neighborhood-based governance entities as potentially important mechanisms for fostering the kind of sough-after "partnership" between local government and its neighborhoods that many officials describe as desirable. However, they also identified a set of limitations that should be understood about such entities - they should inform but not attempt to make city policy, they cannot balance needs across constituencies city-wide, they lack mechanisms of accountability, they cannot assume statutory responsibilities that lie with the city and state, and the extent to which they are truly "representative" of neighborhood interests is sometimes open to question.