It has been almost a year since I started writing blog items for the State of the Re:Union website. I’ve both enjoyed it and found it useful in my work. A lot of what I do at the National Civic League is to disseminate stories of positive community change, stories that typically don’t get the same coverage in the news media that stories about celebrities behaving badly do, or politicians or the weather.

But writing about these communities is only part of my job so I can’t always do justice to the many, many towns, cities, neighborhoods and regions we interact with through the All-America City Award and other programs. Blogging for SOTRU has forced me to focus on one such community every week and that has been good.

And I have to admit. I’m beginning to run out of stories. I’ve pretty much touched on all the finalists and winners from 2011 and some from earlier years. I was shaking my head over what to write about this week when I heard about Sam Lee and the story of Mililani Town, the only Hawaiian community to be named an All-America City.

Samuel Sang Hoy Lee returned to his native Hawaii in 1981 after a 26-year stint in the U.S Foreign Service having served in Sicily, Germany, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan. He was the chairman of the Mililani-Waipio-Melemanu Neighborhood Board when an environmental crisis erupted in his idyllic, tree-line, “perfectly planned” community.

Traces of ethylene dibromide (EDB) and dibromochloropropane (DBCP), pesticide runoff from the nearby pineapples fields, were found in the local water supply. One of the town’s five wells had to be closed because of contamination, the first of several to come.

“Most of the government agencies involved tried at first to downplay the health threat,” related Lee, in his 1985 presentation to the All-America City jury in Cincinnati. “Often supported by the scientific community and the university, their slogan to residents was, ‘Don’t panic!’” But one department head committed a pretty serious gaffe during a community meeting. “Personally, I’m not worried,” he said. “I drink Scotch.”

The community mounted a letter-writing campaign and held a series of nearly two dozen local meetings, eventually wearing down the resistances of the powers that be. “We approached the problem within the perspective of our times,” explained Lee. “We helped government agencies realize that the standards for pesticide use accepted a generation ago were simply not accepted today.”

Community pressure led to the mayor of Honolulu declaring the contamination to be a threat to health and safety, which triggered the release of a $3 million emergency remediation fund, but community pressure also pushed the developer of the subdivision paying for a new carbon filtration system, which freed up the public funding for other water projects. Community pressure also led the EPA to issue an emergency ruling suspending the use of EDB in pineapple fields.

In the course of this struggle, Lee noted, the neighbors gradually began to employ a “secret weapon,” which he described to the AAC jury as “ohana spirit.” Ohana means family in Hawaii, but not the immediate family, the extended family, the clan, the community. The water crisis had “infused the town with the ohana spirit—a sense of the whole community pulling together.”

As for Lee, after leading the successful community uprising, he ran for a seat in the Hawaii House of Representatives, was elected and served five terms before retiring from public office in 1996. He passed away last week at the age of 81.

I never met him, but reading a typewritten transcript of his presentation to the 1985 All-America City the vivid language and good humor, made me smile. In writing about civic engagement, it’s hard to avoid using and overusing verbal abstractions like “deliberation,” “democratic governance,” “public engagement,” and the like. Ohana spirit, though, that’s pretty good.

---

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.

In an article for a special issue of the National Civic Review on the civics of sustainability a couple of years ago, Joel Mills, director of the Center for Communities by  Design, noted a correlation between civic capacity and environmental sustainability.

He later blogged on our All-America City Award site about Dubuque, Iowa, a city I’ve mentioned in a previous post for its success in engaging residents in large scale strategic planning sessions. As Joel noted, Dubuque’s efforts in the sustainability field were getting noticed. The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Dubuque as one of “three partner cities for its new Green Lab initiative to develop best practices in sustainability and preservation.”

Also, “the Obama administration included the city on its tour of America to highlight urban success stories. IBM recently announced that Dubuque will serve as its first Smart City partnership in the United States, with the hope that it can develop a model for other communities regarding energy efficiency.”

Lakewood, Colorado, an All-Amereica City in 2011 is another good example. Lakewood has done a lot to engage residents in budgeting and planning efforts. So with a hat tip to Joel, let me point out that Lakewood, an All-America City in 2011, is also green pioneer.

It all began a few years ago when the Learning Source, one of the country’s biggest adult literacy programs, realized its utility costs were higher than that of a 50-unit apartment building. Worried about the rising costs, the Lakewood-based nonprofit organization began looking for information about energy efficiency.

A conversation with members of the Alameda Community Gateway Association led to more conversations and, eventually, the founding of a “Greening Lakewood Business Partnership,” a public-private collaboration with a twofold mission: 1) to bring energy efficiency to the more than 1,500 existing office and commercial buildings in Lakewood; 2) to provide job training for local residents, including military veterans, particularly those returning from the current overseas conflicts.

First in line for an energy makeover was the Learning Source, which reduced its utility costs from $3,500 a month to $200. The renovations included exterior building insulation, a multistage boiler system, an efficient condensing unit and upgrades to the air handler. An energy management system, solar lighting and photovoltaic and thermal solar panels on two sections of new roof also were added.

City government takes the lead in facilitating relationships with the utility company, the banking community and the Governor’s Energy Office. The Better Business Bureau is providing marketing for the partnership. Other partners include Red Rocks Community College, the Alameda Gateway Community Association, Veterans Green Jobs, the Jefferson County Workforce Center and the Better Business Bureau, each agency has played a unique role in developing the program.

As Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy sees it, the partnership is both a win-win and a “great catalyst” for the community. “It creates jobs, particularly for veterans, provides the training and encourages sustainability,” he says. “Most importantly, it helps our small businesses. Money saved on energy bills can be reinvested in inventories and new hiring.”

Red Rocks Community Colleges developed an energy-auditing, retrofitting and financing curriculum for students. Under the direction of experienced proctors, the students gain field experience needed to pass industry auditing certification tests by conducting the free audits for businesses. The Veterans for Green Jobs mobilize the military veterans to enter the Red Rocks program. The Jefferson County Workforce Center coordinates funds providing paid internships for the students.

Another local Greening effort is the Sustainable Neighborhoods Program for homeowners and apartment dwellers and owners. The program creates partnerships between the city and various neighborhoods to complete projects, host workshops or design other creative ways to engage in sustainable practices.

The city gives annual Sustainability Awards to inspire community members and hosts an annual Earth Week festival that includes an expo of displays, hands-on demonstrations, live music and information on sustainable practices, lectures, tours and cleanup and educational activities.

Two things Dubuque and Lakewood have in common is that both communities have long histories in engaging groups and individuals in creative partnerships. Both cities recognize that they can’t go it alone, and the ability to work across boundaries is essential in tackling difficult challenges such as environmental sustainability.

---

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.

Thirty years ago, the main vehicle for citizen participation—other than voting—was the public hearing. Public hearings are well and good, but they often serve as little more than a steam-valve for irate citizens to vent. In fact, the very term “public hearing” is considered by many civic experts to be something of a misnomer.

Dan Kemmis, a former Missoula mayor and speaker of the Montana House of Representatives, said it best in this book, Community and the Politics of Place: “Out of everything that happens at a public hearing, the emoting, the attempts to persuade the decision-maker, the presentation of facts, the one element that is almost totally lacking is anything that might be characterized as public hearing.”

More and more communities are discovering new and betters ways of talking about (and hearing about) public issues. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for instance, an all-volunteer organization known as Portsmouth Listens conducts regular “study circles” on important local issues.

The study circles process works this way: The small group, consensus-based discussions of 8-12 people take place over a four-week period, meeting once a week. Then they produced a written report on their findings, which was published in the local paper, the Portsmouth Herald.

Portsmouth Listens began as a one-time effort to mobilize parents and students to deal with issues of bullying and violence in schools. Local attorney Jim Noucas and a group of citizens contacted the Study Circles Resource Center (now known as Everyday Democracy) to help put together a dialogue on the subject. More than 12 years later, the city is still using study circles for local dialogues, most recently, an extensive dialogue and report on the city’s budget challenges.

It was Portsmouth city manager John Bohenko’s idea to use the study circles process to review the city’s master plan, the document that guides policy on such issues as development, open space protection, affordable housing, transportation and infrastructure needs.

The master plan involved over 400 citizens over a period of two years. The process led to the development of a visioning statement and set of recommendations adopted by city government.

Portsmouth Listens has also held candidate forums using a dialogue-based roundtable to allow meaningful interaction between voters and candidates.

Portsmouth has a nine-member council with an average of 18 candidates running every two years. So the roundtables were divided into five groups of two or three and the voters into groups of 12-15. Each voter group was given 15 minutes to engage in a roundtable with the candidate groups. Each candidate was given three written questions and their answers are printed in the Herald. The questions were formulated by city officials, former council members and school board members.

Portsmouth Listens co-chair Jim Noucas says study circles have changed how the local government does business. The city is much more likely to consult the public on issues before evaluating the solutions, and the public is much more likely to support solutions that have been developed through deliberation. “It’s not just showing up and giving your opinion,” he says. “You have to be able to work with others, and people walk away with their opinions changed.”

The group is now working to organize a “New Hampshire Listens” to foster dialogue and deliberation on statewide issues and to get more communities in the state to conduct their own local study circles.

You can link here to read a longer article on Portsmouth Listens on the Everyday Democracy website.

---

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.

I’ve been working on revisions for a new version of the Civic Index, a tool created by the National Civic League to help communities assess their civic strengths and weaknesses. In the process, I’ve been looking back at some of the best examples I know of communities doing innovative things with civic engagement.

In general there are two approaches to local public engagement. One is to convene temporary deliberative processes to do strategic planning, issue-oriented dialogues, conflict resolution or problem solving initiatives. Another is to embed public participation processes in local government with permanent neighborhood councils or other structures.

In Sarasota County, Florida, local officials and philanthropic leaders found a third way. Concerned about the negative and unfocused nature of discussions over a controversial bridge project, they decided to form a nonprofit to handle the county’s public participation and dialogue strategies, SCOPE, Sarasota County Plans for Civic Excellence.

“Government tends to do certain things well,” noted Tim Dutton, SCOPE’s executive director, when I interviewed him in 2009. “Encouraging people to engage in rich dialogues has tended not to be one of those things. SCOPE can help out a little bit here because we’re not the government. We are being asked by government to convene around issues now, because we can create an invitation that has a different reaction than what happens when government makes the invitation.”

SCOPE has convened dialogues on such issues as traffic and congestion, aging, affordable housing, school dropout rates, mental health, family violence and community change. Last year, the group convened a summit on environmental action. Sometimes the organization produces short documentaries on topic areas as part of its “Stories Project.”

Interestingly, SCOPE studies and summits have led to the creation of nearly a dozen nonprofit spinoff groups to work in different issue areas, including a community housing trust to buy housing that can be preserved as affordable. A conversation/study on school attendance got the local school district to change the way its handles its dropout policies, and a group of mental health organizations launched a $9 million initiative focusing on children.

Additionally, the organization undertakes what it calls community report cards, looking at a number of indicators that reflect different facets of community life. In 2008, the report card led to the convening of a summit for Environmental Action.

SCOPE was one of the organizers of the Grassroots Leadership Initiative, an effort to identify and develop leaders from under-served communities. One graduate of the program joined the country housing authority board. Another became a PTO president. One became a program associate at a local foundation.

SCOPE has helped change the way citizens and activists think about community solutions, said Dutton. In the early years, recommendations from the conversations tended to produce documents that began with the words, “The County should do….” “We now talk in terms of what we have to do to grow active citizens,” he explained. “How can I have the capacity to make a difference in my own neighborhood? At best we are looking at government being an active partner.”

Today SCOPE receives funding from three area foundations, Sarasota County and (to a smaller extent) four municipalities, the United Way and various groups and individuals. It was one of the three projects the county listed when it was named a finalist in the 2008 All-America City Awards.

At the NCL, we think it is important for communities to convene citizens in large-scale efforts to do problem solving or planning, so people can be engaged in local issues year-round, not just on Election Day. Sometimes we help them do it themselves through our Community Success programs. Often we work with local government officials to kick start a project.

But these days city funds are tight and more and more communities may need to find new ways to finance and organize ambitious civic engagement projects. SCOPE could be an interesting model for other communities.

Counties, towns and cities throughout the United States are finding that more traditional ways of governing and garnering public participation are no longer as effective as they once were. We as an American public are growing more concerned — and, consequentially, more aware — about things going on in our communities. Therefore, there no longer resides an easy willingness to accept that which does not work anymore. That being the case, what are some of the ways your community is changing to make local government work for the good of the people. Use the box below to brag on your civic and civil growth.

---

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.

Stitching together the fabric of communities

Source: The National Civic League's All-America City Quilt Tour

Question: What could be more American than a quilt?
Answer: an “All-America City Quilt.”

Each year, dozens of finalists in the All-America City Awards are asked to submit quilt squares representing something special about their communities. The squares are stitched together into a quilt, which tours the country visiting each finalist town, city, county or region.

I have the quilt from 2007 on my office wall and looking at it reminds me of the communities that participated that year—Somerville, Massachusetts; Richmond, Indiana; and Rancho Cordova, California, among others. The quilt tells a story about that event, the communities that participated and how they view themselves.

First stop on this year’s quilt tour was Kenai, Alaska, population 7115, a finalist and winner in the 2011 All-America City Quilt Tour. Among other things, Kenai’s award winning application focused on a community-wide effort to cleanup a local salmon fishery. Not surprisingly, the town’s quilt square illustrates a salmon leaping out of the river.

Torrance, California, number five on the quilt tour, features a beach scene on its patch. Ann Arbor, Michigan, sports jig saw puzzle pieces fitting together to symbolize diverse groups coming together as a community.

Fort Worth, Texas, has an image of a longhorn skull and a heart. Fort Worth is a cow town, but it has done some great things about dealing with homelessness and mental illness. Downey has a picture of the Space Shuttle (used to be the main production facility for NASA). Lakeview, Oregon, has the image of the sun, symbolizing the town’s commitment to alternative energy sources.)

The patchwork varies from intricate designs—some communities enlist the efforts of accomplished quilters—to very simple and basic cut and paste shapes. Craft and technique, however, are less important than the sentiment and community pride.

It could be the town seal, for example, or an official city motto. It could be a local landmark, a scenic view or words expressing local values and goals, or a combination of any of the above. The patch-makers are encouraged to use their creativity.

The quilt has been a tradition at the National Civic League since Gloria Rubio-Cortés, a quilter herself, became president of the Civic League a few years ago. The original idea was to inject a little fun\and folksiness into the annual award. But the quilt tour also gives the finalist communities an opportunity revisit their successes and to celebrate their great community work.

The quilts are displayed in town halls, libraries, art galleries, schools, recreation centers and municipal office buildings. In some communities, the quilt tour generates a surprising amount of media buzz.

The City of Lakewood, Colorado, for instance, rolled out the red carpet this week to welcome the 2011 All-America City Quilt to town. In fact, there was a police escort and a report in the local TV news. Gloria was there along with Lakewood Mayor Bob Murphy and other local community leaders.

You can link here to see the video from a 9 News report. Lakewood’s quilt patch has the city logo and the word, Lakewood, “We’re a city that collaborates.” Lakewood has done a lot of public process work around revitalizing neighborhoods and older commercial districts.

Last stop on the quilt’s 17-state, 24 city tour will be Beloit, Wisconsin. It has a lovely patch. I’m not sure what the symbol in the middle means.

Along the way it will visit Tupelo, Mississippi; Seaside, Oregon; and Fayetteville, North Carolina, among other locales. The tour is being paid for with support from Southwest Airlines, the official airline of the All-America City Award.

Learn more about the award program and follow events leading up to annual event the All-America City blog at www.allamericacityaward.com. The 2012 All-America City Awards will be held in Denver, Colorado, June 30-July 2 and will have a special focus on communities that mobilize to improve reading scores for low income students.

---

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.

They say that it isn’t your successes in life that matter. It’s how to rebound from setbacks. The same truism could be applied to communities. Towns, cities, counties, regions—all communities face tough challenges. The thing that makes an “All-America City” is the ability to bounce back when challenges arise.

Downey, California, a finalist in the 2011 All-America City Awards, boasts of being the home of the first Taco Bell and the oldest existing McDonald’s. It was also, for several decades, the home of NASA’s main production plant for the Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle Programs. In its heyday, the NASA site employed more than 20,000 people, many earning higher than average salaries. In 1999, the federal government declared the plant a “surplus” site.

Downey is a city of about 110,000 in south east LA County. It prides itself on being a diverse community that, despite being in the heart of a huge metropolitan region, retains an air of small town friendliness. But the 1990s were tough times for many Southern California communities whose economies were based on the military or on the aerospace industry.

Tens of thousands of jobs were lost in what most of us viewed as a peace dividend from the ending of the Cold War. But some cities were better than others of rebounding from the economic transition and finding new ways of bringing in jobs. Downey was one of those.

Instead of waiting for the federal government to clean up the site and auction it off to some commercial real estate developer, the city decided to buy the land itself and expedite the process of turning a potential liability into an economic magnet.

The question was: what to do next? The City of Downey was now the proud owner of a 160 acre empty space with a serious problem of contaminated soil and groundwater thanks to its long time industrial use.

The city partnered with the federal General Services Administration and a private environmental remediation company to cleanup the site. The partners took an innovative approach. The city was allowed to take the sales proceeds paid for the property toward cleaning it up. Putting together an approved clean-up plan for the site was instrumental in getting state sign-off on an early approval of the transfer of the site from federal to city hands.

The expedited clean-up process allowed the city to start finding business to open up shop at the old NASA site. The first was Kaiser Permanente, which bought 30 acres for a new state of the art hospital, a medical center that now employs about 3,000 people. Next was a partnership with a media group to create an 80 acre-production facility, Downey Studios. Some of the films produced there were Terminator III and the Ironman movies. Another 30 acres went for a commercial/ retail development.

In 2007, Downey won a Phoenix Award from the EPA, an award given to groups and individuals who do an exemplary job of environmental clean-up, reuse and redevelopment of an environmentally damaged site.

In 2009, the Columbia Memorial Space Center opened its doors and became a regular stop for school field trips to teach students and others who want to learn more about the space program and Downey’s historic role in it.

The NASA site reuse deal was one of three community projects listed by Downey in its application for an All-America City Award. The other two projects were the “GOOD” program (Gangs Out of Downey) and the Keep Downey Beautiful initiative, an effort by the city public works department to enlist young residents in efforts to clean-up litter, eliminate graffiti, pull weeds and learn about the local environment and how to keep the water supply clean.

You probably know of other communities that have lost a major employer and found innovative ways of replacing the lost jobs. What did they do to overcome the tough times and bring in new jobs and economic activity? Fill in the box below to let us know about those examples.

Happy holidays!

---

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.