[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
In a message dated 6/25/2007 3:57:18 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes (to Sali):
Currently, the folks on the Board are footing the majority of the
bill for clean and safe efforts in wide areas of University City.
Do you think they'll keep doing that
Wouldn't it depend on the extent to which the various parties are
being honest about their intentions and agendas, and the corresponding
goals for what a Special Services District (SSD) might be constituted
to achieve, whether there's a real "partnership" between Penn (and the
other institutions) and the community, the degree to which a NID might
get back on the table after an appropriate SSD proved itself competent
to be the NIDMA, and factors like that.
Personally, I'd like to see an SSD emerge that got back to the basics
of "clean and safe" and dropped the marketing, development, and social
engineering roles that made the UCD so popular with the few anointed
and unpopular with the many benighted, and also operated in a
transparent manner -- both functionally and fiscally -- so that people
either had confidence that the organization knew what people really
wanted and understood the value of a dollar that most people have to
work to earn, or their deficiencies in this area were obvious enough
that they be shown the door.
The above at the policy level, perhaps subject to open deliberations
and stakeholder input (and not at the dog-and-pony forums with agendas
framed by Harris-squared), long before the selection of a new
Executive Director. This way, a person could be recruited -- perhaps
locally, perhaps globally -- with a track record in implementing the
newly redefined policies and in adapting to rather than trying to
reshape the situation on the ground.
I generally agree with Al here, because he does understand what an SSD
and an NID would have to accomplish-- even _before_ it got started. The
big issue is simply getting money. A community can organize an SSD or
NID with the best of intentions and community support. But if it can't
_show_ that it can deliver on the services, it's not going to get any
money from any big donors, which are needed to "prime the pump," so to
speak. Which means it's not going to attract a lot of community-derived
financial support, either.
Al and I would probably disagree on what constitutes 'the basics' and
"social engineering.' Many of the basics _are_ social engineering:
picking up trash on a regular basis has social effects. We keep Clark
Park as clean and well-maintained as we can because, when the park turns
shitty, it affects the quality of life of the rest of the neighborhood.
NIDs aren't created merely to compensate for declining city services;
part of their reason for being is to strategize the way communities will
grow and change in the foreseeable future. It may be something simple
and prosaic (more streetside trees because the ones we have are dying),
or it may be something more business-like (we want to attract certain
kinds of businesses, like artists' shops or software companies or
child-oriented stores). And marketing is an essential part of this. At
the very least, it can offer local businesses a sort of advertising
co-op, where economies of scale operate (advertise many businesses at
once).
The Executive Director described above is kind of a paradox. On the one
hand, we want community-based direction. But we're asking for a great
Executive Director to implement it. It's sort of like saying that we
want a democracy, so we must find a Great Man to rule it. It's
_possible_-- I've got a soft spot for FDR as an example-- but even _he_
had to put up with a lot of yelping cranks who saw no good in what he
accomplished.
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