Last week I had occasion to visit my old college haunt of Bloomington. I was there for a nearby business purpose and so called on an acqauintance who is a member of the Bloomington City Council. We discussed city issues in our respective homes and had lunch at the City Hall. I found it most enjoyable and informative.
New Albany could do well to adopt some of the ideas and methods in use in Bloomington. I'm not suggesting something as simple as, Bloomington, good; New Albany, bad. It's more like, Bloomington forward-thinking and inclusive, New Albany, not so much.
Our northern neighbor has 39 boards and commissions which are chartered by the City Council. These boards address a wide range of issues from bicycle and pedestrian safety to a commission on the status of black males, from accessability issues to sustainability issues. These boards and commissions meet (many are volunteer boards with no pay) to discuss issues of importance to the board members. Council members seek out some with apparent knowledge but citizens with less apparent expertise in a given field are also asked into the discussion. The product of the boards is then made available to the City Council and the Mayor with hope that it will result in more informed decisions. It brings more people into the government. It is closer to government "of the people, by the people". It is, in short, closer to democracy.
New Albany has boards and commissions as well. I sit on the Plan Commission. Presentations at those hearings would be given greater value if they could include input from a board which had, for example, studied the environmental impact of a proposed development, or the impact new construction might have on a historic neighborhood. The benefit I see when using the Plan Commission as an example is that citizens, who have an emotional as well as an economic stake in preserving their surroundings, would not need to stand alone. They may not need to adopt the role of the obstructionist because it is the only role available to them in the short time allowed to prepare a case on their behalf. Ideally, during the hearings of the board or commission, the differences could be aired and what comes to the Plan Commission could be a studied plan with more input from all sides and less of the rancor of a pitched battle.
The meeting in Bloomington also jogged me to think that we have one of those universities here too. I don't think we are taking full advantage of that valuable asset. I hope as a councilman to do my part in changing that. I hope the new Mayor does his.
A quick note from the news:
I also heard a few minutes ago that the French mime Marcel Marceau has died at age 84. So please, a moment of silence.
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7 comments:
I feel as long as the core of New Albany is a breeding ground for sociopaths or just people who are devolving socially, progress is forever squandered. You could not pay me enough money to put my child in an inner city school here where his peers come from "homes" who's values are so vastly different than ours. When such a sizable portion of downtown households are anti-social, how do you make progress? On the other end of the economic-social spectrum leadership means taking all you can and running with it - to the hills surrounding us. How does the middle make progress squeezed as it is by these powerful forces?
C'mon - quit ragging on Coffey's and Price's constituency.
g.coyle:
One good thing about the inner-city schools is that they are part of the fabric which can hold this part of town together. Another good thing is that the majority of teachers who have stayed with the inner-city children are qualified, experienced and committed to betterment of those children.
The decision of where to send your own child is, of course, highly personal. Only you can make it.
Unfortunately, not all parents have the financial means to make such a choice, and it is for those children that the quality of public schools is so critical. It is also a symptom of a dysfunctional society if we don't or won't offer the best education possible.
The best and perhaps the only thing city government can do to improve the environment from which good schools can grow is to build a strong, vibrant city. The best solution to flight from the city is to make flight to the city attractive. The periodic blips in the price of gasoline sometimes look like they might turn the tide. But until the units of society, sometimes referred to as people, begin to recognize that the inner-city is safe place and it can be a good, or even, a preferable place to raise children,it will redmain in its current state.
I would bet that the rather wide net you cast in your description covers a number of people who, regardless of their financial means, yearn for a better life for their children and these same people hope to see better days for this city.
Without getting too long-winded here, I would refer you back to some earlier posts where I have suggested rejuvenation of the city through "challenge zones". With leadership from the Mayor and the Council, this approach could clear obstacles to making distressed areas attractive again; both in the economic and the aesthetic sense.
Since I've come off the road and spent more time getting involved at home as well the neighborhoods, I have discoverd that although they get the most attention, the ner do wells of our society are indeed a minority.
The majority, abiet unfortunately silent in many cases, want better for themselves, their children, and their city as a whole.
Drawing them out to speak and get involved in the process is the challenge of our time.
Government should recognize the advantage of doing so but unfortunately for a variety of reasons they do not in our case.
On the positive side, our various neighborhood groups as well as other local organizations are beginning to to demonstrate that there is strength in numbers. Even small numbers.
We can only hope that these grass roots efforts will continue to grow and that local government will learn to embrace them rather than oppose them.
They are after all composed of the very voting public that elected said officials.
Well said, Highwayman.
Many current local government machinations depend on the ignorance and apathy of the voting public rather than on it's enlightenment. Rather than seek information or rationally explain, some elected officials purposely obfuscate, making themselves the primary and sometimes only source of biased or incorrect information.
The committees that John mentions would not only bring additional information to the table as part of a more inclusive, objective decision making process but would also help limit or at least provide balance to some of the more negative behavioral trends we so regularly witness.
Excellent article John,
Bloomington almost sounds like Utopia compared to New Albany.
I have seen an increase in the involvement of the "regular" non-office holding people in the last couple of years and find this very encouraging. Certainly we do need a lot more, but we are off to a good start.
Lloyd, Jeff, Shirley:
The most valuable aspect of Bloomington's liberal use of boards and commissions is the involvement of citizens it brings. Not everyone has the time nor the inclination to seek a seat on the school board,the city council or some other elected office. That does not mean they don't care about their home(town).
Howard Dean, as I recall, became involved in civic issues when he joined a group to build bike paths in his town.
Not only does a one-way policy of government deprive citizens of direct involvement in their civic affairs, it also deprives the city of the wider pool of talent present in the community at large.
Civic involvement deepens the role you can play in government to something more than tax-payer.
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