With all the controversy swirling around in Washington these days, and with our recent local election just completed, I got to thinking about what level of government has the most impact to our daily lives. Seems to me it is probably our local government – our City Council, county commissioners, and our school board. They set the rules for everything from what can and cannot be done on a given piece of property to setting speed limits on our streets, to providing a framework for commercial and residential development, to determining how our kids get educated. Importantly, more than at any other level, these elected officials live here. They are members of our community and live in our neighborhoods.
With each election cycle, such as the one just completed on April 4, our City Council has a fresh start regardless of whether it is comprised of many incumbents or new faces. The council members, and we as citizens, can commit to renewing relationships in a spirit of a fresh start, and look together to how best to advance Springfield. As with any election, that can be challenging given the stress and strain that elections impart. There will also no doubt be proclamations of various mandates presumed to be implicit in the voting outcomes. And from such perspectives can come all manner of responses: jubilation, fear and everything in between. We as a community develop best when we do not translate these emotions into counterproductive gamesmanship. In the end as a community we will all win or lose together.
As we move forward as a Neighborhood Advisory Council intent in our own way to help improve our neighborhoods via relationships with City Council, City staff and others, I think of comments made by Professors Jay Parini and Keegan Callanan in the wake of the shouting and rioting that made it impossible for an invited speaker to speak at their school, Middlebury College in Vermont:
“A good education produces modesty with respect to our intellectual powers and opinions as well as openness to considering contrary views. Only through the contest of clashing viewpoints do we have any hope of replacing mere opinion with knowledge. Genuine higher learning is possible only where free, reasoned, and civil speech and discussion are respected.”
As members of our community, perhaps we too can be modest in admitting we don’t know it all, that we need to thoughtfully consider the views of others – whether well-spoken or not – as a basis for learning and working together.
As this new City Council cycle begins, NAC has offered a series of recommendations for consideration in the City’s next budget cycle. Collectively they build from a philosophy that the health of our community is most directly and personally felt in our homes and neighborhoods. It extends out from there to the community as a whole including our business sector. Neighborhoods and commerce depend on each other and it is through our actions as members of our community, in our jobs and in relationships to our elected bodies that both sides of this dependency can be nurtured and advanced. After all, no company will want to relocate where there is unremittent squalor and strife – regardless of the economic incentive packages offered. The key NAC recommendations offered are:
Continue efforts to restore a strong Neighborhood Planning Office as a means to assure that need for both commercial and neighborhood development is maintained.
Build on successes achieved in community policing and crime reporting by adding PAR officers and other activities that assure our police are seen by all as beneficial to our community.
Continue the Neighborhood Communications Initiative, including this quarterly publication and its related Web site.
More details about these recommendations and many others can be found at sgfneighborhoodnews. com/nac.
Springtime in Springfield! What a great time for a renewed start!