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CIVIC PARTICIPATION - INSPIRING STORIES References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page
Hitting A Civic Nerve: A Civics Fair Unexpectedly Unleashes 7,000 Would-be Community Builders Springfield, Missouri. Note: The following is based on articles first appearing in the daily newspaper, the Springfield News-Leader, which helped organize and promote "The Good Community Fair" in Springfield, Missouri (population 147,000). The numbers. No one could believe the numbers. On a warm January day some 7,000 people squeezed into Springfield's Drury College Student Center to make their community better. Because it was the kind of sunny Saturday good for catching up on outdoor chores, the turnout caught organizers, agency workers and volunteers off guard. "I thought there would be 300 people to show up," said Trudy Pischer of Boys and Girls Town of Missouri. "This has renewed my faith in the community spirit." If the numbers were any indication of a new trend, Springfield is headed toward a better quality of life in a hurry. The Good Community Fair, as it was called, was the culmination of a 14-part series called "The Good Community," reported in the Springfield News-Leader. For two weeks the series examined community issues such as juvenile crime, job training and homelessness. Then for two weeks the newspaper looked at potential solutions and who was doing what to address them. At the end of the series, residents held a townhall meeting to discuss how to translate talk into action. "For two months the community really wrestled with that," says Randy Hammer, executive editor of the News-Leader. "The feedback from everybody was, 'I want to get involved; I just don't know how.'" Much like a health or jobs fair, this event would give citizens a chance to see how they might pitch in. From the beginning, there were signs that something special was about to happen: Organizers hoped to recruit 60 agencies for The Good Community Fair; instead, 120 signed up to exhibit at the event. Five of Springfield's radio stations agreed to broadcast live from the fair. In addition, one radio station and a television station said they would sponsor displays. One Springfield manufacturing company gave its 850 employees special incentive to attend the fair: for each employee who attended the fair and chose a charity to work for, the company promised to donate $100 to that agency. The media attention given to the Good Community Effort is what attracted and inspired citizens to get involved. Without ongoing coverage the citizen turnout would have been much lower. For more information, call Randy Hammer, 417-836-1111 References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page Cabrini Green, Chicago by Kimberly Ridley Neighborhood kids harassed Eric Davis and his fellow undercover cops every day as they patrolled the Cabrini Green Housing Project in Chicago. Whenever the kids saw the cops approaching, they blasted "F---the Police," by the rappers Niggaz With Attitude (NWA). Tired of the taunt, the cops told the kids anyone can rap. The kids challenged them to prove it. So Davis and company wrote some lyrics, practiced rapping in front of the mirror, and did their thing the next week at the police station. The kids loved it and badgered the cops for more. Davis agreed, but only if the NWA antics stopped. These days, kids on Chicago street corners and beyond are cranking up Davis's rap. A child of Cabrini Green himself, Davis is now one of the Slick Boys, a trio of singers who wrap their rap around positive messages. The Slick Boys have reached millions of young people with their videos on MTV and Video Jukebox. "Rap music is young America's CNN," says Davis, a.k.a. "21." "When kids sing our rap, positive things are running through their minds. We tell them the same thing their moms tell them, the clergy tells them, but it's coming from someone cool-the Slick Boys."
They're still cops too. Although the Slick Boys spend more than half their time touring schools around the nation and abroad, Davis says much of their most important work still happens on the streets, where they broker gang truces, break up confrontations, frisk kids for guns, and arrest those they find packing one. But their work is not one big high-speed chase. Davis and fellow Slick Boys James Martin and Randy Holcomb spend many patrols holding down neighborhood basketball courts or helping kids with homework, forging bonds that could go a long way toward steering kids away from the streets and back to school. "We go out there to be involved with young men and women," Davis says. "For many police, their only contact is negative. We've humanized ourselves rather than having an 'us versus them' attitude. When I say to a kid, 'I want you to get your diploma,' it doesn't sound crazy because the kid knows this guy cares." Still, violence claims young lives every day. Although Davis may not know the victims of violence in Cabrini Green, he usually knows relatives or friends. Breaking the cycle, he says begins at home, in everyone's home. "People think violence is a black problem, a Latino problem, an Asian problem." Davis says. "What we have to realize is what goes on in our neighborhood is our problem, because these are our kids killing each other." Though Davis says he loves police work, he acknowledges the power of music, the media, and money. The Slick Boys, who receive about 500 fan letters a week, also created and consult on the Fox television series New York Undercover, and they're at work on more music and a book. They could easily leave the poor neighborhoods of Chicago, but it's clear their commitment to the kids who live there runs deep. The money generated by their fame funds the Chicago-based Slick Boys Foundation, which helps disadvantaged youth pursue their dreams. "We never started rapping intending it to become this large, Davis says. "But it enables us to do more for the kids." Reprinted with permission from HOPE Magazine , Premiere Issue, March/April 1996. Subscriptions available for $24.95/year. E-mail: info@hopemag.com. References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page Dallas, Oregon Makes Quality Recreation Facilities A Priority: A Partnership for Success by Gwen Van Den Bosch The people of Dallas, Ore., a rapidly growing city of 11,000 have a tradition of doing the important things themselves. The community is known as a good place to raise a family. The people have always been self reliant and preferred to improve their community without always solving problems with more government. However, as a growing community, residents felt the need for more organized recreation and cultural programs. To respond to this need, the city, in cooperation with civic leaders, non-profit youth sports groups, and concerned citizens, formed a public/private/non-profit partnership and rallied around the loss of an historic softball field to develop two multi-purpose recreation complexes. The complexes would provide facilities for all age groups, as well as for organized sports and open play. One major problem confronting the group was that the city did not have available property within its current parks complexes. Kids Inc., a non- profit youth sports organization, had been working with the school district for five years and had not been able to complete their project. Kids Inc. held a lease on vacant La Creole Middle School property and had plans to develop the site in the future. However, they agreed to relinquish their lease if the city would get involved and agree to manage the recreation complexes. The city decided to use its staff to coordinate the Recreation complex projects and authorized spending $20,000 of Park Trust Funds toward completion of these complexes. The city also agreed to negotiate leases with the school district, and then manage the complexes after completion. Kids Inc. dedicated $20,000 they had budgeted for their project at La Creole Junior High and agreed to perform much of the maintenance of the fields. Another new recreation complex was built on the other side of town in cooperation with softball enthusiasts. The Whitworth School area accommodated two ball fields and La Creole Junior High accommodated three fields. Many people volunteered equipment and numerous hours of labor, and several local businesses donated materials or gave substantial discounts. The Oregon National Guard provided heavy equipment and operators as a function of their training requirement toward construction. Several local farmers donated their equipment and time to plow, cultivate and seed the fields and numerous youth spent hours removing rocks from the fields. The success of this project can be directly attributed to the partnership and involvement of the public, private, and non-profit sectors working with the city. City staff provided professional leadership, services, and personal effort bringing the project to fruition. Actual cash outlay for the project was less than half the original estimates; the project was made possible through successful donation drives resulting in hours of labor, equipment, materials, and money being provided. The innovative use of idle school property, leased to the city, provided the necessary land; community funding through donations, the City Park Trust, and non-profit organizations provided the money needed; and, the immediate and timely response by the community has provided two outstanding recreational complexes. Following the hiring of a coordinator, the city and school district created an innovative facility use agreement so the community can use school facilities after the normal school day is over and city facilities at any time. Scheduling of all facilities by one individual has allowed better coordination and use. The city and the school district each have priority on the use of their own facilities followed by local civic organizations, then the general public. Gwen Van Den Bosch is Mayor of Dallas, Ore., and first Vice Chair of the National League of Cities' Small Cities Council; ©1995 Nations' Cities Weekly. Reprinted with permission of the National League of Cities. References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page Building on Common Ground by Tricia Curry Roseanne Haggerty had visited the Times Square Hotel at 43rd Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan in the 1980s, but not even her colleagues' dismal descriptions prepared her for her second visit in May 1990. "It was incredible. The lobby was literally full of garbage and stank of urine," she says. Worse, she added, was watching children play amid the piles of garbage in the dim lobby as a squad of security people stood looking up at the balconies, on guard. On that day, Haggerty, then a low-income housing developer for the Brooklyn Catholic Charities, says she became obsessed with the idea that life for the inhabitants of New York City's then-notorious welfare hotel did not have to be hopeless and filthy. By late 1991, Haggerty had incorporated Common Ground Community, Inc., drawing on her housing contacts to assemble a board of 12 movers and shakers including powerful area business people from companies like Goldman Sachs & Co. and Lazard Freres & Co., as well as directors from other not-for-profits, and advocates for the homeless. The group cobbled together funds from the city's S.R.O. (single room occupancy) Loan Program, tax credits, and corporate contributions to finance the purchase of the building and the $ 18 million renovation. In March 1992, Common Ground bought the building the City had seized from a slumlord and drew up plans to rebuild both the hotel and the ailing community within. Today, the once dank lobby gleams with buffed marble floors and bustles with the activity of the lively mix of people who call the Times Square home. With 652 studio apartments, the Times Square is the largest residence of its kind in the country, offering residents in-house medical and social services, and, for some, even jobs. It is setting precedents not just for its size, but for the diversity of its inhabitants, its attention to social services, and its contributions to economic development, Haggerty says. Integrating the 175 tenants who chose to stay after Common Ground bought the building was central to Haggerty's vision. Many were elderly and/or mentally ill. The renovation took place in phases. Soon, inhabitants began moving from their rat-infested apartments, many with crumbling walls and nonfunctioning plumbing, into freshly plastered single-room occupancy units with sturdy new oak furnishings, tiled bathrooms, and kitchenettes. Critics questioned Common Ground's plan to integrate a 50-50 mix of working people who make below $23,000 and those unemployed or unable to work. But Haggerty says the mix works for residents, who are interviewed several times before they are chosen to live at Times Square. Tenants range from a young actor who runs rehearsals for plays down in a large basement room to people with full-blown AIDS to those who have been in and out of institutions. Joel Margulies moved to Times Square from a Queens psychiatric hospital in 1979 and had seen building owners come and go. "No one before had shown any interest in improvements," Margulies says. He remembers water freezing in icicles on the wall of one room as it dribbled from a pipe that had burst two years earlier. But Common Ground seemed to care from the beginning, notes Margulies, neatly turned out in rainbow-colored suspenders, his breast pocket bulging with coupons. Margulies, who has diabetes, is one of many residents who take advantage of the in-house clinic and social services network run by Urban Family Health at the Times Square Hotel. The services operate on a whatever-clients-can-pay basis. Business people in the neighborhood - which is undergoing a renaissance of its own that includes Walt Disney Co.' s plans for an upscale family-style hotel- are enthusiastic about changes at the Times Square Hotel. ''Conventionally businesses might not want an S.R O. in their back yard," says Gretchen Dykstra, who heads the Times Square Business Improvement District. We not only love it, but Roseanne is active in bringing new economic life into the area." The Common Ground project also means savings for the city. The cost for the city to support a single person for a year in housing like Times Square is about $9,700, compared with a $20,000-a-year price tag for a city-run shelter. Tenants pay 30 percent of their income in rent, and the 130 who are completely unsubsidized provide more than $1 million a year in rent to the Times Square. Reprinted with permission from HOPE Magazine , Premiere Issue, March/April 1996. Subscriptions available for $24.95/year. E-mail: info@hopemag.com. References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page Community Economic Development Delray Beach, Florida A community polarized by racial, ethnic, and economic divisions, Delray Beach faced increasing illegal drug usage, crime, and prostitution. With declining citizen confidence in city government and in the police force, Delray Beach desperately needed change. Citizens began addressing their problems with "Taking Back Our Neighborhoods", a program that depends on the cooperation between police, residents and city government. A new police chief instituted foot and bicycle patrols through neighborhoods, which created a visible and familiar presence. Residents responded by joining citizen observer patrols and forming crime prevention groups. A group of civic-minded African American men, called MAD DADS, organized to patrol the streets and report suspicious activities. Over 600 people, in less than six months, were trained by the police to patrol their neighborhoods; most are senior citizens. Several other groups are involved in the neighborhood patrols. Recognizing that education in Delray Beach was in dire straits, the city began pushing for the restoration of inner city schools. Two local homebuilders, realizing the long term negative impact of poor education on area business, designed a comprehensive plan to upgrade schools, build new schools, and redraw district lines in an effort to make Delray schools competitive with other nearby communities. Their plan was presented to the school board and gained city commission support. A special task force formed to work with the community and gain citizen backing; Delray citizens later supported the plan by voting on a tax increase to finance it. Because of changes in education policies, minority student busing to the suburbs has declined, and more white students are being attracted to the newly upgraded schools. References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page Residents Use Board Game To Build Community by Alice Jones At a time when a 30 percent turn-out at the polls for a primary election starts to look good, and pundits mumble about the future of American democracy, residents of Marlborough, Mass., found a new way to initiate meaningful political discourse and take an active role in the governance of their community. Through an innovative, community assessment technique using a board game, people in this community of 32,000 residents 25 miles west of Boston helped local officials assess their city's needs and chart its future. Marlborough's unique community forum climaxed a month-long assessment involving representatives from thirteen different sectors of the community. Amid the colorful trappings of a political convention, groups representing all segments of the city - newcomers and long-time residents, the elderly, youth, Brazilian immigrants, Latinos, African-Americans, business leaders, and members of the religious community - brought their unique perspectives to local issues, evaluating the community's strengths and challenges in a frank exchange with city and state officials. Hosted by U.S. Congressman Marty Meehan, the meeting allowed other key local leaders - Marlborough mayor Michael J. McGorty, State Senator Robert Durand, and State Representative Dan Valianti - the opportunity to explore with participants the possibilities of federal, state, and local partnerships to address challenges like educational funding and transportation needs that confront Marlborough. Playing CityScope More than 120 Marlborough residents got together to play CityScope, a community assessment game designed by the Carlisle Education Center, a program of Education Development Center Inc., of Newton, Massachusetts. 'The game was played in focus groups of eight to ten persons, each group a cross section of residents from an important sector of the community. "This game is an unusual chance for some real, old-fashioned political discourse at the grassroots level," Meehan said. The game overcomes many of the weaknesses of conventional assessment techniques like polls and surveys, since it brings people together to take responsibility for the problems that affect the quality of their lives. The assessment exercise resembles a board game, in which players sort a deck of cards onto individual game boards. Each card represents a common urban issue. The cards are divided into three suits or categories examining different aspects of the community. Issues in the services category deal with local government; health care and social services; education; and public safety. The city's physical characteristics, including the environment, the local economy, and its recreational and cultural assets are featured in the second suit, while human relations issues make up the third category. Players selected their top five community assets and three high priority problems. Each group elected two members to present their findings to city and state and officials and fellow residents. Members of the audience joined in the discussion to decide the appropriate next steps in meeting challenges brought to light by the assessment groups. Participants have formed a leadership coordinating council to propose solutions and monitor progress on top priority problems. Strengths and Weaknesses Are Identified Police services topped the city's list of assets, while educational leadership and the lack of public transportation ranked as two of its top problems. Other major problems cited were substance abuse (drug dealing and drug use, alcohol abuse, and drunk driving) and family problems (outlook for youth and the kinds of community resources like teen centers and swimming pools, needed to better support youth and families). Even though most participants called Marlborough a friendly town where diverse residents get along well, 43 percent selected a human relations issue - especially the lack of diversity among city employees and school staff - as one of their top three concerns. Like snapshots taken from many different perspectives, the views of participants presented a complex and interesting mosaic of life in Marlborough. "The important thing is not just seeing what people agree about, but finding out how different kinds of people experience the city differently," said Fatinha Kerr, Director of Marlborough's Cultural Network Center, an agency serving the multi-cultural needs of the city. "That's really important if we're going to create the kind of community that meets the needs of all its people," she added. The community assessment is part of a five-year, community change project, known as the Marlborough Action Alliance sponsored by the Carlisle Foundation, the Carlisle Education Center, and the city of Marlborough. The Foundation has pledged up to $1 million to help Marlborough improve the quality of life for its families and children. Marlborough also serves as a pilot site for the study of social change in an urban environment and as a testing ground for the development of innovative tools for community change, such as CityScope.
For more information, contact: Alice Jones; Carlisle Education Center Tel.: 508-371-9898; Fax: 508-371-0059 Reprinted with permission from the Nation's Cities Weekly, April 22, 1996, p. 3. Nation's Cities Weekly is a publication of the National League of Cities. References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page East St. Louis' "Awesome" Partnership by Neal Peirce, Washington Post Writers Group A cutting-edge "empowerment" partnership between a university and an urban community is flourishing in this most bruised of all American cities. Once a bustling stockyard and industrial town, East St. Louis suffered race riots in 1917 and wholesale white flight after World War II. Massive industrial shutdowns, arson and abandonment ravaged the town. Successions of corrupt politicians betrayed it. The population, 90,000 in 1960, is now estimated at 35,000, mostly poor, 98 percent African American. Ghostly burned-out hulks plague almost every street. Forty percent of the city is empty. State-appointed bodies oversee the municipal and school finances. In most people's eyes, only a deeply religious reform mayor and a tax-generating riverboat casino have provided any hope at all in the '90s. Enter (quietly) the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 145 miles distant. In 1987, Wyvetter Young, an outspoken black state legislator from East St. Louis, challenged the university president to prove his institution's urban service commitment, especially for lower-income blacks. The university's reaction: just enough money for architecture, landscape design and urban and regional planning faculty to make forays into East St. Louis to assess its problems. A survey two years later found little impact. Grass-roots East St. Louis leaders viewed university-based planners and designers as "carpetbaggers" who use inner city problems chiefly to justify research grants. Then came a vital turn. Led by Kenneth Reardon, an assistant professor of urban and regional planning, the university crews decided to start humbly, working in just one or two neighborhoods, asking residents to define their own problems and priorities for recovery. Showing their sincerity, the faculty and students of the East St. Louis Action Research Project joined neighbors to clear away crack houses and burned-out buildings, build vest-pocket parks, scrape and paint old structures (they got a donation of light blue paint, called it ''fighting Illini blue''). Six burned-out houses--all originally owned by slumlords, all fallen under county control--blighted one playground site. To clear title, county officials forced the university-neighborhood group to through the gantlet of appealing unpaid back taxes to seven special purpose districts. To the county's amazement, the group succeeded--even though word was passed it could have avoided the trouble by using a select East St. Louis ''consultant'' with the right political connections. The park was planned by residents--with a big input on the playground element from children sketching out their ideas on large pieces of butcher paper. The idea of a farmers' market was born after a survey of 500 households showed residents' income flowing to suburban markets. Students checked out markets in other cities, helped design and build affordable market stalls, and now farmers bring in produce regularly. Unfortunately growing produce on city lots, originally considered, had to be rejected after university soil tests showed dangerous levels of cadmium, zinc and arsenic. Students and local citizens studied a proposed extension of the St. Louis MetroLink light rail through East St. Louis, discovered a better route with a potential for clustered development at the stop, and seem likely to have their way. And recently residents of eight neighborhoods, again with university help, set up an East St. Louis Community Action Network to force systemic city action on clearing derelict structures and vacant lots--havens, they claim, for rats, snakes and crack cocaine dealers. The perceived enemy: absentee owners who make political contributions and avoid responsibility for their properties. Indeed, the group has hard evidence with which to confront slow-moving city inspectors--800 specific sites of serious code violations (illegally dumped trash, derelict buildings, dense overgrowth) that students surveyed and entered on the university's computerized GIS (Geographic Information System). The project's Internet web site is being used as a potent tool to gather hard data, maps and analysis for neighborhood improvement and to force city cooperation. Computers (including surplus university equipment) are being installed at multiple sites, with training available. The paint's still fresh at the university's new St. Louis office, a spot where East St. Louis residents and community organizations can drop by for computer access, one-stop technical assistance, training and volunteer assistance. Hundreds of students now participate yearly. Strong emotional ties are being formed as students learn to work closely with and respect neighborhood people of strikingly different backgrounds from their own Young planners and architects trained under the program--with portfolios showing real experience in participatory urban problem-solving--are landing important jobs in community development in such cities as New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. The project has, in fact, scored a rare and heartening success in bridging America's social chasm of haves and have-nots, university elite and the people of troubled neighborhoods. East St. Louis Mayor Gordon Bush has a one-word description for the effort: "awesome." (c) 1996, Washington Post Writers Group References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page Seattle Matches Citizen Effort with City Dollars By Theresa Morrow, American News Service
ANS-Under a towering, gray bridge over Lake Washington's ship canal, there stands a huge troll with one odd lolling eye and a giant paw crushing a very real Volkswagen bug. Families from around the city come to this little, isolated pocket where bridge meets land in the funky, artsy neighborhood of Fremont. Crowds of youngsters climb the troll's head, hang from his nose, stare eyeball to eyeball into his face. The troll was not the creation of a city park department fed up with drug trade under the bridge or a politician with an odd sense of how he'd like to be remembered. This creature is evidence of a unique partnership that combines the resources-and imaginations-of ordinary citizens with the assets of city government. It's a new twist on the often-hostile relationship between neighborhood residents and city hall. "We're not telling the city, 'We have a problem, You better fix it.' It's more like, 'We have some concerns, and this is our proposed solution,"' said Ellen Stewart, who heads a local non-profit social agency. Residents are able to act on their proposals through Seattle's Neighborhood Matching Fund. In this cooperative effort, the city sets aside money for projects -- but a neighborhood has to match the funds with donated time, materials, labor or money. After receiving a prestigious award for innovations by state and local government, the matching fund program is now being replicated by other cities around the country. In Seattle, the fund has actually taken in more than it has given out, if you count sweat equity and out-of-pocket offerings by residents as assets for the whole city, which most people there do. But until recently, partnership was hardly the word to describe relations between city residents and city government. Confrontation was more like it. "The focus then was that government needs to do more," said Jim Diers, a former community activist who now works for the city. Residents wanted more cops on the beat. They wanted government to stop the construction of high-rise apartments in their neighborhoods of one- and two-family homes. But activists like Diers began pushing the idea, as he explains it, that "neighborhoods could do much more for themselves." Much to Diers' surprise, people turned out by the hundreds to dig holes, paint, work side by side with kids and seniors and generally take responsibility for their neighborhoods. The Neighborhood Matching Fund does not balk at funding such oddities as bigger-than-life trolls, murals where horses gallop off walls and into alleys, peace parks festooned with colorful paper cranes, even a neon Rapunzel perched in a turret overlooking a busy waterway. But the fund -- $1.5 million annually from city coffers -- is normally tapped for less fanciful things: community policing, anti-violence programs, and neighborhood planning, to name a few. In all, the program has funded over 700 projects-and involved thousands of city residents. That is actually the purpose behind the effort-to get people involved and help strengthen neighborhood organizations, according to Diers, who now directs the city's Department of Neighborhoods. A neighborhood applying for money has to show that it will involve its residents, that the project is a self-help one and that it will encourage diverse groups to work together. The department has tried especially to bolster organizing efforts in poor neighborhoods that usually lack political power-"and that has been our biggest success," he said. The matching fund idea has grown to include communities that are not necessarily neighborhoods. For example, Seattle's Vietnamese community conducted an oral history project paid for by the fund. In applying for matching funds, residents not only come up with ideas for their communities, they also participate in the committee that reviews applications and chooses those eligible for funding. Accountability lies with the residents, not the city. By now, the city has spent a total of $8 million-and gotten back an estimated $20 million worth of volunteer help in projects such as, in one neighborhood, the conversion of a storefront into a community police station, or, in another, Seattle's first "drug-free zone" to address concerns of public safety. For years, many residents had clashed bitterly with the city over zoning, with controversies flaring over high-rise apartments in particular. But with the help of matching funds, neighborhood groups have hired planning experts to devise their own land-use proposals. To the surprise of many, these projects have resulted in fairly balanced community plans, rather than the cry of "not in my backyard" often heard in the past, according to city officials such as Diers. Yet even with the strides toward partnership, "there is still an element of confrontation," said Stewart, who directs the North Seattle Family Center, a service agency. "But I'd say we're more like friendly enemies when it comes to hot issues. There's always a pull and tug. Even little things, like traffic lights, can lead to confrontation. People still want to know why the city isn't doing anything," she said. But Stewart said residents have found a channel for their discontent, through the matching fund process. "They're willing to be part of the solution. They're willing to kick in their support to reach their goals." In 1992, Seattle's Neighborhood Matching Fund was recognized as one of the nation's top 10 innovations in state and local government by a Ford Foundation funded awards program of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Other cities have followed Seattle's lead. Among those that have created their own matching funds are Charlotte, N. C., Orlando, Fla., and Provo, Utah, as well as Vancouver, B. C. Diers said he has received requests for information about the program from dozens of other cities. Perhaps not surprisingly, the matching fund program has met with some resentment in city government. The city's park department, for example, sometimes balks at having to watch over the parks developed or improved by the neighborhoods. "They just have to change the way they do business," Diers said of the park department with a wry smile. But even at that level, the neighborhoods take on the responsibility. In Fremont, for example, residents started a "troll patrol" to prevent vandalism to the one-eyed monster. And at other parks, anti-graffiti painting parties are the norm. "This really is a catalyst for neighborhood organizations," Diers said. "We never would have had the troll come out of city government." Theresa Morrow is a journalist, multimedia producer, and author of Seattle Survival Guide: The Essential Handbook for Urban Living. Her articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, and the Seattle Times. References of Civic Participation | Return to Civic Participation Home Page Return to Teaching Resources
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