National Civic Blog

All-America Cities Announced!

Just back from Tampa where we held a particularly successful All-America-City event. About 900 people came from all over the country.

The Tampa host committee and volunteers were very gracious and helpful, as were our stalwart volunteers from Barnstable, Massachusetts. (Barnstable won in 2007 and people there were so jazzed by the event that they sent volunteer delegations to help in 2008 and 2009.

The 2009 All-America Cities (alphabetically by state) are:

 

Phoenix, Arizona                 Inglewood, California

Fort Wayne, Indiana            Richmond, Indiana

Wichita, Kansas                  Somerville, Massachusetts

Albany, New York                Kinston, North Carolina

Statesville, North Carolina    Caroline County, Virginia

 

Here is the press release, and here is a link to NCL President Gloria Rubio-Cortés’s photo album of the Friday night award presentation. I’ll be posting more about the winners and their community projects in the near future.

According to the jurors, this was a particularly strong group of finalists and winnowing the 29 down to ten All-America Cities wasn’t easy. I hope some of these finlaists try again next year when we will be in Kansas City, Missouri.

Dubuque

I had a guest editorial in the Tampa Tribune yesterday on Dubuque, Iowa's economic development successes. Dubuque has done a lot of public visioning and strategic planning work over the years and is now getting some much deserved recognition. Dubuque was an All-America City award-winner in 2007.

Here's a link to the editorial.

The spring edition of the National Civic Review is out. It’s a special issue on "Diversity, Social Capital and Immigrant Integration." (Thanks again, by the way, to the Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Colorado Trust for their support.)

The issue has an introductory piece from Robert Putnam, author Bowling Alone and other influential books. Also, essays by Rinku Sen, co-author of The Accidental American; Joshua Hoyt of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; and Eboo Patel and Becca Hartman of the Interfaith Youth Core. Former Littleton (CO) Mayor and Denver Post columnist Susan Thornton has a report on her city’s immigrant immigration project; Fairouz Abu-Ghazaleh writes about OneMorgan County, a refugee and immigrant program on the eastern plains of Colorado and Terry Amsler and Greg Keidan adapted their Institute for Local Government report on "Engaging California’s Newcomers."

You can regularly get the National Civic Review by becoming an NCL member. Link here. Or order a subscription or individual issue by visiting Jossey-Bass’s web site.

Transparency and open government

By Gloria Rubio-Cortes

 

The National Civic League was one of 12 organizations recently invited to a listening meeting with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Director Beth Noveck to provide resources and ideas for the directive to follow the President’s Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government.   

   

“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.  We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government," says President Obama’s Memorandum For the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies.

   

We know you have expertise and a passion for open, transparent, and participatory government, so we are you to give us your ideas on directive language.

 

E-mail your ideas to me at gloria@ncl.org or write them in the comments section of this blog.

 

Below are some ideas NCL has already submitted to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.  We want to thank NCL’s Board and others who provided these great ideas, in particular the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and ZeroDivide. 

  

• Support efforts that attend to systems, structures, institutions, and policies, not only to people
• Support policies that are both “targeted” and “universal” to ensure they reach and benefit marginalized populations.  
• Support place-based, region- and system-wide work.  
• Support efforts that illuminate our “linked fates” across lines of race, gender, class, and social status.  
• Support high tech, low tech, and in-person (or offline) methods to involve the public with particular attention to engaging underserved populations (rural, urban, people of color, people with disabilities, etc) with appropriate methods and strategies (such as ethnic media, for example).  
• Adopt a strong racial equity framework and support work animated by an explicit racial analysis.  
• Support approaches that are sensitive to the needs and contexts of particular marginalized groups.  
• Support research and practical efforts to generate communications strategies and components that build support for racial equity.
• Support efforts that leverage the expertise of organizations (nonprofits and others) to engage the public in an open, transparent and effective way.

 

MetLife Foundation Ambassadors In Education

This being awards season for the National Civic League, we just announced the 2009 MetLife Foundation Ambassadors In Education. These are teachers who have excelled in building community partnerships.

There are some great stories this year. Read the press release by clicking here. Summaries of what they did are at the bottom of the page.

I'll have more info on some of these outstanding educators in subsequent posts, but I'll just say now: I don't know how they find the time and energy to do what they do in and outside their classrooms.

All-America City Finalists Announced

 

Today NCL announced the finalists in the 60th annual All-America City Awards, the "Oscar" for civic engagement and community problem solving.

The 32 finalists are:

Phoenix, Arizona
Fort Smith, Arkansas
Inglewood, California
Rancho Cordova, California
Windsor, Colorado
Tampa, Florida
Bensenville, Illinois
Carbondale, Illinois
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Richmond, Indiana
South Bend, Indiana
Des Moines, Iowa
Windsor Heights, Iowa
Wichita, Kansas
Pocomoke City, Maryland
Rockville, Maryland
Salisbury, Maryland
Somerville, Massachusetts
Belton, Missouri
Albany, New York
Benson, North Carolina
Kinston, North Carolina
Clinton, North Carolina
Statesville, North Carolina
Toledo, Ohio
Wooster, Ohio
Toledo, Oregon
Erie, Pennsylvania
Providence, Rhode Island
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Rowlett, Texas
Caroline County, Virginia

The award competition and alumni celebration will be held June 17-19 in Tampa, Florida.

This is going to be an exciting year for the program. Lots of energy with a great set of finalists.

Click here for more info.  

 

Julie Fanselow's very fine National Civic Review article on community blogging is featured on the Everyday Democracy web site.

Ours too, of course. If you haven't read it already, here's another chance.

What teachers think

MetLife Foundation has been doing an annual survey of public school teachers since 1984. The most recent survey, released last October, suggests that teachers today are more satisfied with their jobs than in years past. They feel more respected in society, recognized for their work and better compensated, compared to years past. All this according to the survey’s findings.

Teacher attitudes about their students have also improved. They view their students as better prepared for grade level work than in the past. The majority of teachers surveyed do not see the supply of qualified teachers as a serious problem for their schools. Teachers and principals alike rate the training and preparation of teachers for the classroom higher than in the past.

Unfortunately, the attitudes of teachers in urban schools are not as positive as those of their colleagues in suburban and rural communities. Urban educators rate their schools lower in quality and their students as less academically prepared. They are also more concerned about issues such as teacher turnover, student dropout rates, school disciplinary policies, parental support, poverty and poor nutrition.

You can read the full report here.

Sustainable Communities

NCL is working with the City of Broomfield, Colorado and U.C. Denver to organize a community conversation on sustainablity. The process will lead to the development of a "best practices" guide.

The stakeholder planning phase (about 30 to 50 residents) will focus on developing components of the community plan. It will include public meetings to keep the entire community up to date on the process.

One product of this effort will be a toolkit that could be used by other communities across the country. It will feature ways to capture the wishes of constituents and get buy-in from residents, businesses and other institutions. 

NCL has worked in Broomfield before in a process that led to the first city/county consolidaiton in the state in decades. It's in the city's comprehensive plan to be "a leader in implementing environmental stewardship policies."

l'll have more "who, what, why and how" info in subsequent posts....    

The New Mexico House of Representatives this week passed a "same day registration" bill that would allow voters to register and vote on the same day during an early voting period.

 

According to Demos president Rapoport, it is similar to a law that has worked well in North Carolina, where they have one stop voting sites during the early voting period.

 

A recent national survey of election clerks on Election Day registration (EDR) finds the process manageable with few problems at the polls.

 

For information on the Demos nationwide campaign to promote EDR, visit www.demos.org.