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The Neighborhood Agenda and the City 5 minutes with the next mayor Dear Mayor When people move into a neighborhood, they want it to be clean, safe, economically viable and a decent place to rear their children. Creating neighborhoods that meet these broad standards is possible only if there is an active partnership among citizens, community organizations, and all levels of government. We all have to work together. Over the last three years, the city of Philadelphia has undertaken a number of new initiatives to achieve the goals that Philadelphia residents set for our neighborhoods. The Neighborhood Transformation Initiative aims at improving neighborhood appearance. Safe Streets reduces crime, particularly on main streets. This paves the way for new economic development on these neglected corridors. Community-based programs serving young people now reach thousands of kids in the neighborhoods. These, combined with schools CEO Paul Vallas' ambitious agenda for improving schools, have started to make every neighborhood a better place to rear children. The problem, Mr. Mayor, is that each of these initiatives is operating largely on its own. One month the city is cleaning vacant lots; some other time, police show up on retail corridors to implement Safe Streets. After-school and community-based programs for young people are expanding without reference to the other steps the city and school district are taking to improve the lives of children and their families. The critical challenge for your administration, then, will be to consolidate these distinct initiatives into "neighborhood agendas" that can be implemented. These agendas would fall somewhere between the day-to-day delivery of services and the long-range comprehensive plans that the City Planning Commission produces. They would define the social contract between community organizations and the city, setting forth specific goals for improvement and defining the mutual responsibility of citizens, community groups and government to achieve them. Implementing comprehensive neighborhood agendas would become the major component of the city's work in every neighborhood. Neighborhood agendas would address four basic questions What can we do to improve the appearance of neighborhoods over the next year? What will make the neighborhoods safer? How can we strengthen neighborhood economies? What do we need to do to improve education and programs serving young people in the neighborhoods? The specific objectives developed in this way would be put in writing and maintained by citizen groups and the city as the basis for their relationship. Meetings would take place throughout the year to review progress in implementing the agenda and assess what remains to be done. Once the objectives of one agenda were achieved, a new one would be negotiated. The Center City District and the city have functioned on this basis for more than a decade, even though their relationship is not called a "neighborhood agenda." We all see the results. It's time for the city and the school district to build comprehensive strategies with community groups throughout Philadelphia, Mr. Mayor, as a prerequisite to achieving the goals for our neighborhoods that we share.
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