National Civic Blog

So many choices

Popular political blogger Matt Yglesias seems to be channeling Richard Childs today with his lament about low turnouts in the New York City primaries.

Childs was the guiding force behind the 1915 Model City Charter, which launched the small council/professional city manager plan for local government, now the norm in most small to medium-sized cities and a number of large ones. Not New York.

Childs was also founder of the short lived "short ballot" movement, and I might add, a New Yorker. He believed that "only those offices should be elected which are important enough to attract (and deserve) public examination…."

Good Examples

Thanks to various colleagues and comment writers for their suggestions. I had asked for examples of local governments or communities using dialog, deliberation or democratic governance to resolve contentions issues.

Peter Levine of CIRCLE and Joe Goldman of AmericaSpeaks suggested the New Orleans UNOP process. That is a good example. After Katrina, there were several recovery planning processes going at once, but none seemed to be garnering public support. There was a lot of distrust and anger in the community and fear that some neighborhoods would be written off. Participation in the various processes was not very high.

A group of foundations helped fund a new effort with AmericaSpeaks, which organized a 21st Century Town Meeting, inviting thousands of New Orleans residents and doing outreach to people who had sought refuge in other cities (Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, etc).

Bottom line was they were able to reach consensus on a recovery plan, thus freeing up millions of dollars in funding.

A few good examples

I’m looking for vivid examples of local governments or communities facing polarizing issues comparable to the federal health care reform debate and resolving them through public participation, dialog or deliberation.

I’d like it to be something fairly specific—a difficult or complex policy decision rather than a visioning/ strategic planning process or dialog about a more general topic.

Can anyone think of any (hopefully recent) examples?

The Return of Urban Policy?

Interesting piece from Neal Peirce on citiwire.net about the emergence of a de facto urban, or as he pefers--metropolitan--policy brain trust in the Obama administration.

He attributes this development, ironically, to the lack of such a coordinated urban policy effort in past administrations. It left a vacuum in which "many veterans of years of work in cutting-edge city and state governments, moved quickly to identify joint approaches–synchronizing, for example, aid for new transit stops and affordable housing, or energy-saving weatherization and revitalizing low-income neighborhoods."

"Now the Obama Cabinet, including such seasoned urban veterans as Shaun Donovan (HUD) and Arne Duncan (Education), instinctively looks for collaborative ways to address city-region challenges."

Also, he notes:

"Obama has also ordered–for the first time in 30 years, since 1979 under President Jimmy Carter–a serious interagency review of all federal programs that impact cities. Urban observers anticipate it will be a quality effort because the man in charge will be a top administration intellect, urban analyst and author Xavier de Souza Briggs, Obama’s appointee as director of general government programs at the Office of Management and Budget.

It’s hard to find a mayor or city activist who doesn’t believe these steps, plus the new administration’s collegial, open attitudes, represent an extraordinarily positive turnaround."

 

More Misc.

Also,

This proclamation re: AAC and a new award dedicated to the late John Parr from the Denver City Council.

 

Miscellany

I have not been doing any blogging lately. Too much actual work to do, deadlines, etc. Also, a week's vacation after the All-America City Awards in Tampa.

I recently presented a Webinar for PACE  on the report I did for them on local government and civic engagement. Visit the PACE website to download a PDF.

The summer issue of the National Civic Review scheduled for late August will include articles based on the PACE report, as well as some great related essays from leaders of public sector organizations (NLC and ICMA), city staffers (Portland's Office of Neighborhood Involvement), a nonprofit leader (Joe Brooks of PolicyLink) and a practitioner (Terry Woodbury of Kansas Communities LLC). It's going to be a good one.

I hope to be a more active blogger now that I've cleared my desk a bit, but in the meantime, here's a photo of someone you might recognize holding an AAC T-shirt.

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.