A few years ago, I had a little problem with the voting. I’d signed up for a mail-in ballot and as soon as I did, I knew it was a huge mistake. All my adult life, I’ve been going through the civic ritual of showing up at the neighborhood polling place, being greeted by the friendly neighborhood poll worker, going into the little booth and casting my vote. As Election Day neared and I had yet to receive my mail ballot, I began to worry. What if it doesn’t show up in time? Can I go to the polling place anyway? What should I do? So who did I call? 311. The friendly guy on the other end of the 311 line answered my question and eased my anxieties about the late mail-in ballot.

In the late 1990s, the Federal Communications Commission came out with ruling giving local government a new tool, the “311” designation for non-emergency calls. The original idea was to take the pressure off of 911 call-in centers, which often got non-emergency calls from confused citizens. Hampton, Virginia, became one of the first cities in the country to create a 24-hour, seven day a week, one stop customer call center using 311. The goal was to provide customer service as quickly and efficiently as possible, minimizing the number of times citizens would have to hold on the phone and or by told to call another city department.

The 311 systems vary in quality and extent from city to city, and these days cities are cutting back on hours and services because of the budget crisis. But Hampton’s call center’s knowledge base allowed customer advocates to answer more than 4000 different questions about local government and other nearby public agencies. The system is based on keywords, allowing customer services advocates to quickly input questions and get the answer. It also gave the capability to directly issue work orders to handle problems such as potholes or downed streetlights.

The system has helped alleviate one of the biggest challenges in local government performance, the ignorance of many citizens about who does what, and thereby, who to call. In many regions, government services are dispersed between villages, townships, cities, counties and a myriad of special districts. Simply calling city hall, in other words, may result in nothing more than a referral to another agency or department. Now the customers/citizens have an easy task. When in doubt, simply call 311.

Calling 311: Somerville Mayor-Senator-Governor

Somerville, Massachusetts, a 2009 All-America, has a 24-hour 311 call center service allowing citizens to ask questions and make requests for service. Easy to answer questions are handled immediately. Others are answered in a timely manner through e-mail or a follow-up call, ensuring that citizens are not shunted from one department to another. Requests for service are entered into a database, given a tracking number so citizens can find out how things are proceeding.

In Somerville, the 311 system is a two-way street. The calls and work orders became an important source of data for the city’s data-driven performance management program, a system known as SomerStat, which was started by the city’s energetic mayor, Joseph Curtatone. The origins of SomerStat go back to 1994 and efforts by the New York City Police Department to link crime fighting efforts to timely, accurate data generated by police calls, computers and databases under the city’s CompStat program. Geographic information system software was used to pinpoint problem areas in the city and regular performance management meetings were held to ensure that resources were being deployed in the most efficient manner. The resulting drop in crime rates was dramatic, and other cities noticed. Baltimore created its CitiStats program using data to drive performance management in all city departments.

Somerville has added a new twist to the “stat” concept, combining it with good old fashion face to face meetings. Somerville began its ResiStat meetings in 2007 to complete the feedback loop between citizens and government. The comments and suggestions of residents are reported back to the SomerStat semiweekly data-driven performance evaluation meetings and compiled in an annual Resident Report that is published along with the official city budget.

Calling 311: NCL's All-American City Awards

As part of Somerville’s ResiStat” program, the mayor, the local alderman and other city officials meet with citizens in each of the city’s nine wards, which correspond roughly to neighborhoods, and five special interest groups (parents, young people and speakers of the city’s three main foreign languages—Spanish, Portuguese and Creole.) The goal of these public meetings is to present information generated through SomerStat, the city’s data-driven performance management system, and get feedback from citizens.

The 311 systems are great for answering questions quickly and easing the frustration of citizens who get tired of hearing, “sorry that’s not my department.” But at Somerville and other cities are proving, 311 can also help complete the information feedback loop between citizens and government, which is an important element of any thriving democracy.

Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Tapping the Potential of Non-Traditional Leaders

I haven’t always been a big fan of conventional youth leadership programs. They seem to be places where young go-getters go to network with important people and learn new ideas about becoming better go-getters. What’s the point?

How about a program for kids who aren’t actively seeking leadership positions or looking for ways to maximize the potential they have already exhibited and been recognized for time and time again?

Do I sound bitter? Was I passed over for leadership accolades when I was a youth? Looking back on it, I can’t recall any inspirational mentors who recognized my innate potential, lurking somewhere beneath an off-putting veneer of smart-alecky cluelessness. On the other hand, I can’t say that I was much interested in being recognized either.

So naturally, I’m drawn to the idea of communities trying to develop the less obvious potential leaders who may have been passed over by the usual leadership development entities, and that’s what Salisbury, Maryland, had in mind when it developed its Youth Leadership Academy to focus on engaging non-traditional youthful leaders, those with untapped leadership potential and limited opportunities.

A little background: Salisbury was named one of the “100 Best Communities for Young People” by the group America’s Promise in 2006 and awarded $20,000. The local chapter of the organization met to figure out how to use the money and the planning group unanimously agreed to create an academy focused on developing the community’s “non-traditional leaders,” that is, the kids with untapped leadership potential and limited opportunities.

The Salisbury program is available to any young person between 8th grade and junior year in high school at no cost. It reaches out to local secondary schools and youth organizations. But word of mouth is the most effective recruitment method, the organizers of the academy have found.

The academy works like this: students come together for three days in the summer at Salisbury University to learn new skills and ideas about leadership. From those participants, a Youth Action Team (YAT) is created to plan the next summer’s academy. Any interested graduate of the Academy is accepted for YAT.

YLA graduates have made an impression. Two students won positions in the Student Government Association their freshmen year. Another became senior class president. Other students have served on boards of organizations and attended a Search Institute Conference. One graduate was the Student Representative to the Maryland State Board of Education.

That graduate was also a 2010 Olympic torchbearer for Coca-Cola. Another graduate was accepted into the CIVICUS program at University of Maryland-College Park. Several graduates received scholarships to attend colleges such as Davidson, Morgan State University, Princeton, and Shaw University. Others received the President’s Service Award.

Hundreds of young people have participated since YLA was founded in 2006 and the program has never turned anyone away. One graduate explained that YLA “has brought the youth voice to the table—youth are included in planning groups as an expectation not an exception now.”

Salisbury was an All-America City in 2010 and YLA was one of the programs they touted when they appeared before the civic jury. Salisbury’s was one of several innovative youth-led programs described at the 2010 All-America City Awards. In Chandler, Arizona, a group of young people developed a comprehensive community program to discourage underage drinking and substance abuse. High school students in Middleton, Wisconsin, a finalist in 2009, participated in a planning “charrette” to design a new splash park.

Communities all over the country, in fact, have recognized the importance of engaging young people in leadership development and local problem-solving/decision-making efforts, and it’s beginning to show in terms of the larger numbers of young people who are included in the community delegations at the annual All-America City competition/celebration.

It’s an old cliché to say that young people represent the future of the country. These days the new cliché is that “young people aren’t the future, they’re the present.”

What new youth movements are on the horizon in your community? Are there any youth programs in your town that you think are deserving of accolades? We are always looking to assist in touting amazing stories such as these, so please drop us a line and let us know.

Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Today’s School Spotlight is highlighting a great piece from State of the Re:Union’s contributor Mike McGrath with the National Civic League. This post on education elicited such a positive response, SOTRU would like to share it one more time for your ruminating pleasure.

Sacramento Focuses on Grade-Level Reading

I see that State of the Re:Union has been doing some reporting on Sacramento, California, exploring some of the tough challenges facing the community, so I thought I’d mention that Sacramento is joining the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a national effort to get more low income kids to read at grade level by third grade.

Last month, Mayor Kevin Johnson launched the Sacramento Reads! 3rd Grade Literacy Campaign, one of the largest community-wide reading initiatives in the United States. Currently only about 37 percent of third graders in Sacramento read at grade level. The goal of Sacramento Reads! is for 80 percent of third graders to be reading at grade level by 2020.

Sacramento’s ambitious plan is part of a collaborative effort by dozens of funders and nonprofit partners across the nation known as the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Other communities that have answered the call include New Britain, Connecticut; Springfield, Massachusetts and Los Angeles, California.

The campaign focuses on three preventable causes of the performance gap between low income readers and other students:
• The readiness gap: The fact that many low income kids who show up for school are already behind because they haven’t had as much access to books or high quality pre-kindergarten programs that help prepare students to learn.
• The attendance gap: I’ve already written a blog post about this problem. Research has found that one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students nationwide misses nearly a month of school each year in excused and unexcused absences.
• The summer slide (summer learning loss): Lots of students lose ground over the summer if they are not reading at home or engaged in enrichment programs.

The National Civic League has also joined this nationwide effort. Our part will be to encourage communities to address the reading gap by focusing the 2012 and 2015 All-America City Awards on grade level reading efforts. Ordinarily, the award programs let communities choose the issue areas they want to present to our jury of civic experts at the annual event. In 2012, we’ll be doing things a little differently.

In 2012, the All-America City Award program will be a little different. NCL is asking communities to develop comprehensive plans that focus on the three critical areas identified by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Winners must demonstrate capacity to use data, deploy effective interventions, build strong cross‐sector partnerships, and mobilize public will to improve reading proficiency in the early grades.

Since the late 1990s, NCL has asked All-America City finalist communities to list at least one project that benefitted or engaged young people. Consequently, we’ve had more than a few past winners present reading or literacy projects.

For example: Marietta, Georgia, a winner in 2006, touted “Marietta Reads!” program. Participants selected books from approved lists and are tested on reading comprehension. Students earned points on the basis of the book’s difficulty and test scores. Goals were set for students at each grade level in all the city’s schools, and students earned awards by reaching those goals.

Hollywood, Florida, a winner in 2007, presented its “Born to Read” program, which positioned a fulltime librarian at the Memorial Primary Care Clinic, to interact with each family of young children. New families were given an application for a library card, a resource guide and a first book for the child. Families were given instructions on ways to encourage reading and this is reinforced with every subsequent visit to the clinic.

El Paso, Texas, a winner in 2010 has its annual Día de los Niños/ Día de Los Libros to improve literacy and health awareness in the community. The event involves a free giveaway of books and opportunities for young people to sign up for the Summer Reading Club.
For today

Tupelo, Mississippi, a winner last year, featured two projects from the mayor’s task force on education: “Read Tupelo” which provides a morning of learning for approximately 400 four and five year olds, including art activities, a music demonstration with various instruments, and story time presented by local officials and volunteers. Another initiative provides every baby born at North Mississippi Medical Center’s Women’s Hospital a copy of the book, Goodnight Moon.

Our hope is that more and more communities will do what Sacramento is doing and organize community-based efforts to address the reading gap. (Another difference in 2012 is that the campaign and its partners are offering technical assistance and peer learning opportunities to cities that participate in the award process.) To qualify, communities must submit a letter of intent by October 14.

For more information on the All-America City Grade Level Reading Award, visit the campaign’s website or the All-America City Award blog.

Because (thankfully) we are all different, we’d like to hear what your comments and thoughts are. Do you know of a unique school program that works for your community? If so, please, let us know.

Back in 2009, IBM announced it was opening a technology center in Dubuque, Iowa, a move that would bring 1,300 jobs to the region. Not long afterwards, I read an editorial by a TV commentator in Madison, Wisconsin: “IBM could have located here, and chose Dubuque. That’s just not right.”

Source: Dirk Hansen

What seemed remarkable to the author the opinion piece was the notion that a small, Iowa city would be selected instead of a more recognized technology “triangle” or “corridor,” but it wasn’t much of a surprise to me. Dubuque was an all-America city winner in 2007 and I knew that it was an unusually innovative community. What it lacked in glitz and cachet, it more than compensated for with pluck, organization and civic spirit.

To be selected a finalist for All-America City Awards each community must submit an application that tells its story and describes three community-improvement projects and Dubuque had quite a dramatic story. In 1985, it had one of the highest levels of unemployment in the country, upward of 23 percent. The city’s largest employer, John Deere, recently had shut its doors, and residents were leaving in droves. Old-timers remember when a joker put up a billboard outside town that said: “Will the last person to leave Dubuque please turn out the lights?”

A few years later, the city undertook an ambitious public planning process called Vision 2000, in which citizens from across the region met to lay out a road map for economic recovery: The vision that emerged was a “diverse and balanced economic base that provides job security for all segments of the community … secured through the support, retention, recruitment of retail, manufacturing, hi-tech, services, year-round tourism, recycling businesses and industries.”

Source: Gregory Davis

Focusing on bringing in new industry – insurance, technology, publishing, health care, education and tourism – Dubuque rose to No. 1 among Iowa’s metro centers for job growth. A revitalized waterfront with hiking trails, restaurants, a museum and an aquarium reconnected the city with one of its great resources, the Mississippi River.

Vision 2000 was the first of four strategic planning processes that took place in Dubuque over about a dozen years, the latest being Envision 2010 in 2005, when thousands of residents convened to dream up 10 “big” ideas for the future.

One of those ideas was for downtown Dubuque to be a “cool” place to live, where people surf the Internet and chat in cafes with original art hanging on exposed brick walls, a place that would draw young professionals away from Chicago and the Twin Cities because of its combination of livability, affordability and opportunity.

“It all started in the 1980s when people decided we had reached the bottom and collectively wanted to make it a better community,” said Mayor Roy Buol. “The new Dubuque, that’s what I call it. People really bought into the idea. There was a common desire to better the community and make it place where everybody has opportunities, a place people want to come, and when they do come, to stay.”

Last year, when we were doing a special issue of the National Civic Review on environmental sustainability, Dubuque’s name came up again—as a case study in community-wide successful environmental sustainability planning. Again I wasn’t surprised.

Few, if any, winners of the All-America City Award have exemplified the spirit of regional cooperation, civic engagement and community innovation more effectively than Dubuque. It’s a story that we love to tell and tell again.

To learn more about the National Civic League, click here, or to nominate your city for an All-American City award, visit here.

Is there a similar story of rebirth and rejuvenation for your town that you would like to share? Please do let us know, we would love to hear about it.

Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

Sacramento Focuses on Grade-Level Reading

I see that State of the ReUnion has been doing some reporting on Sacramento, California, exploring some of the tough challenges facing the community, so I thought I’d mention that Sacramento is joining the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a national effort to get more low income kids to read at grade level by third grade.

Last month, Mayor Kevin Johnson launched the Sacramento Reads! 3rd Grade Literacy Campaign, one of the largest communitywide reading initiatives in the United States. Currently only about 37 percent of third graders in Sacramento read at grade level. The goal of Sacramento Reads! is for 80 percent of third graders to be reading at grade level by 2020.

Sacramento’s ambitious plan is part of a collaborative effort by dozens of funders and nonprofit partners across the nation known as the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Other communities that have answered the call include New Britain, Connecticut; Springfield, Massachusetts and Los Angeles, California.

The campaign focuses on three preventable causes of the performance gap between low income readers and other students:
•    The readiness gap: The fact that many low income kids who show up for school are already behind because they haven’t had as much access to books or high quality pre-kindergarten programs that help prepare students to learn.
•    The attendance gap: I’ve already written a blog post about this problem. Research has found that one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students nationwide misses nearly a month of school each year in excused and unexcused absences.
•    The summer slide (summer learning loss): Lots of students lose ground over the summer if they are not reading at home or engaged in enrichment programs.

The National Civic League has also joined this nationwide effort. Our part will be to encourage communities to address the reading gap by focusing the 2012 and 2015 All-America City Awards on grade level reading efforts. Ordinarily, the award programs let communities choose the issue areas they want to present to our jury of civic experts at the annual event. In 2012, we’ll be doing things a little differently.

In 2012, the All-America City Award program will be a little different. NCL is asking communities to develop comprehensive plans that focus on the three critical areas identified by the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading. Winners must demonstrate capacity to use data, deploy effective interventions, build strong cross‐sector partnerships, and mobilize public will to improve reading proficiency in the early grades.

Since the late 1990s, NCL has asked All-America City finalist communities to list at least one project that benefitted or engaged young people. Consequently, we’ve had more than a few past winners present reading or literacy projects.

For example: Marietta, Georgia, a winner in 2006, touted “Marietta Reads!” program. Participants selected books from approved lists and are tested on reading comprehension. Students earned points on the basis of the book’s difficulty and test scores. Goals were set for students at each grade level in all the city’s schools, and students earned awards by reaching those goals.

Hollywood, Florida, a winner in 2007, presented its “Born to Read” program, which positioned a fulltime librarian at the Memorial Primary Care Clinic, to interact with each family of young children. New families were given an application for a library card, a resource guide and a first book for the child. Families were given instructions on ways to encourage reading and this is reinforced with every subsequent visit to the clinic.

El Paso, Texas, a winner in 2010 has its annual Día de los Niños/ Día de Los Libros to improve literacy and health awareness in the community. The event involves a free giveaway of books and opportunities for young people to sign up for the Summer Reading Club.

Tupelo, Mississippi, a winner last year, featured two projects from the mayor’s task force on education:  “Read Tupelo” which provides a morning of learning for approximately 400 four and five year olds, including art activities, a music demonstration with various instruments, and story time presented by local officials and volunteers. Another initiative provides every baby born at North Mississippi Medical Center’s Women’s Hospital a copy of the book, Goodnight Moon.

Our hope is that more and more communities will do what Sacramento is doing and organize community-based efforts to address the reading gap. (Another difference in 2012 is that the campaign and its partners are offering technical assistance and peer learning opportunities to cities that participate in the award process.) To qualify, communities must submit a letter of intent by October 14.

For more information on the All-America City Grade Level Reading Award, visit the campaign’s website or the All-America City Award blog.

Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.

My father was a broadcast/film professor at SMU. Radio was his first love, but he relished any and all forms of media—TV news, old movies, theater. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Living Theater, the New Deal-era program that paid starving actors, playwrights and directors to stage live drama about current events.
I know that if he were alive today, he would have loved digital media and the almost infinite potential of broadband Internet. I also know he would have been a big fan of BTOP (Broadband Technology Opportunities Program), which is part of the federal economic stimulus package adopted in 2009.

In Southern California, the Tribal Digital Village is working with ZeroDivide, the San Francisco-based technology foundation, and using BTOP funding to promote awareness and adoption of broadband in the tribal areas of San Diego County. Baseline broadband adoption on these reservations is only 17 percent, as compared to about 66 percent of communities nationwide. In most cases this is due to a simple lack of availability.
Matthew Rantanen is director of technology for TDV, a nonprofit founded by the Southern California Tribal Chairman’s Association. He says that for many who live in the tribal areas past experience with the Internet, if any, was an AOL dial-up account. “We are out there telling people what broadband actually is, and ways you can make changes in their lives,” says Rantanen. “Many people don’t even understand the opportunities.”
TDV, which is both a provider and an evangelist for broadband, is taking a “slow rollout” approach, moving from reservation to reservation in an effort to sign up more residents for its wireless broadband service, which consists of a solar power microwave tower that sits atop a hill. The group can offer “line of sight” service to homes on and near the reservation. In other words, if you can see the home from the hill, TDV can provide the service.
Currently, TDV is providing broadband service to about 270 homes. Eventually they hope to hit about 2,000 homes, but before they can do that, they need more funding to upgrade the system and partially subsidize the cost of installation and equipment.
So what are the people learning? “We give them give an overview of the Internet, something on online banking, applying for college or jobs, job training, how to use maps, find directions and how to buy airplane tickets,” says Rantanen. “Then we go through the whole social aspect, the My Space, Twitter all that. We jump into personal website building and promoting business, promoting a craft and online sales of the craft. We show how its can be a resource for medical care and e-health for things like DMV, managing your personal assets, investing, email, Apple’s iChat and Skype.”
“Half the people that show up are parents or grandparents of children who have Internet at school, but when they come home, they have nothing,” says Rantanen. So they’re telling their parents or grandparents, `Look, we’ve got to have Internet, because I need it for my school work.’”
BTOP strikes me as having echoes of the New Deal rural electrification program, an effort that transformed the lives and economic fortunes of millions of American in rural areas of the country.

Rantanen for one is a firm believer in the transformational power of broadband, especially when it comes to education and jobs. “The unemployment rate on tribes is typically hovering around 50 percent,” he says. “With broadband they can look on craigslist and find jobs in their area. They can go online for training, build resumes and apply online.”

“Even if you walk into Home Depot to apply in person,” he adds, “they put you at a computer and you fill out the application on a terminal. There’s a huge shift in the way things are working and being out in a rural community and not having access to broadband really restricts your ability to move in today’s market.”

Mike McGrath is senior editor and chief information officer for the National Civic League. A former newspaper reporter and magazine writer, he is editor of the quarterly National Civic Review, which will be beginning its centennial year of publishing this spring.

Mike’s posts will appear every Thursday on the State of the Re:Union website.