Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial | Ideas that could help
February 18, 2007
For the last month, in 30 forums over 30 days in neighborhoods all over the city, the Great Expectations: Citizen Voices on Philadelphia's Future project has invited the city's residents to dream dreams both ambitious and practical.
Here are some first fruits, 23 neat ideas that emerged from those rousing dialogues.
They are ideas meant not only to address the city's most glaring problems - crime, schools, job base, corruption - but also to buttress its most shining assets - its culture, parks and history, its universities and hospitals, its close-knit neighborhoods.
Truth be told, citizens struggled most to find fresh ideas on the big, hairy, top-of-agenda issues of this election year. Often they settled for stating broad goals or echoing ideas already heard on the campaign trail.
Where they were most creative was working on smaller, quality-of-life issues - or breaking down the huge issues into smaller first steps that might change attitudes or create momentum. For a fuller look at the yield from the forums, please see http://www.greatexpectations07.com/:
The Apprentice: Philadelphia: Invite business-student teams from the Big 5 universities (and Drexel, too) to compete to come up with the best business plan to create jobs inside Philadelphia. Find a venture capital fund that would give seed money for young graduates to try the idea.
'Hood to 'Hood Field Trips: Close-knit neighborhoods can also be cliquish and hostile. One idea to open kids up to the city's diversity emerged from several groups: Have students design a tour of their neighborhood, stressing its history and assets, then host that tour for kids from a school in a different neighborhood. Then have the schools reverse the process.
Crime Czar: The next mayor should appoint one person in charge of anticrime strategy, with enough sway over the budgets of the district attorney, courts and probation departments to bring them to the table.
The Pledge: Ask all candidates for mayor to sign this anticorruption pledge: "If any person I appoint to my administration is convicted of official corruption, I will resign."
Someone to Watch Over Me: Create an ombudsman independent of either the mayor or City Council to investigate citizen complaints about performance of elected or appointed officials.
311 Line: Set up a 311 line for non-emergency requests for service or to complain about problems.
Do-Gooder Rewards: Encourage volunteerism by offering city-subsidized rewards for sustained volunteer effort: tax breaks, business discounts, or sports tickets.
SEPTA Service: Not an Oxymoron?: Ideas flowed on this topic:
Create a fare card that riders can load up with a dollar value, then swipe for easy access. Better yet, make it a regional fare card - a la E-Z Pass - good on PATCO and Amtrak as well as SEPTA.
Put route maps and schedules on bus shelters.
Work a deal with Mapquest, Yahoo! Maps, etc., so that whenever users type in a city address, they get directions how to reach it via SEPTA.
Require SEPTA board members to ride the system at least once a month and report on their experiences.
Put prominent, well-marked newspaper recycling bins at all train and subway platforms.
Run more "night owl" service for young people going out on the town.
Put SEPTA token machines in high-traffic areas, e.g., Wawa.
Good Buzz: Partner with Wireless Philadelphia to maintain and transmit a "Wish You Knew" blog/text service, to disseminate positive city news and word of things to do around town.
Anchors Aweigh: Institute a water-taxi service up and down the Delaware.
City of Learning: Use a national marketing campaign with that theme to promote the city's universities and colleges. Similarly market the city's hospitals as a quality-of-life asset, particularly to parents with children.
Cultural Buddies: Pair people up across ages, races and neighborhoods to share the city's rich variety of cultural offerings. The orchestra one night; a hip-hop concert the next.
The Sherpa Guide to L&I: Create the job of "customer guide" to the city bureaucracy, someone who would take charge of guiding a person's application for a building permit or license through the red tape.
The History Alliance: Create an alliance that would do for Philadelphia's many small historic sites and houses some of what the Theater Alliance of Philadelphia does for the city's theater groups. Don't forget African American sites such as the John Coltrane house. The alliance would enable the many nonprofits that care for the sites to share services, promote them jointly to tourists and schools, and devise a regional preservation strategy.
To the Dogs: Create more dog runs at parks and rec centers. They are a quality-of-life draw and are centers of friendly connection.
Let's Have Dinner Together: City schools suffer from low parent involvement, but many young parents shun schools as hostile, lecturing places. With school help, home-school associations could organize informal, potluck dinners hosted by active parents, who could share useful information with other parents and invite them in a friendly way to get more involved.
Edmunds.com for the Schools: Many parents have no idea about the school choices developing under the reform agenda - and how could they? The district needs a consumer-friendly Web site for parents to search by address for all of their school options, with clear information on resources, programs and how to apply.
In a mayoral election year, The Inquirer and the University of Pennsylvania’s Project on Civic Engagement, based at the Fels Institute, will convene a regionwide dialogue about what Philadelphia needs to do to deliver on its promise as "The Next Great City." The dialogue will include forums with hundreds of civic leaders and ordinary citizens, to identify the key issues the region needs to work on to get there. It will include reporting, research and public forums on possible solutions and innovations that have worked, in Philly or elsewhere. It will include major election-related events, including online, radio and televised debates and a citywide Deliberation Day two weeks before the May primary. It will include innovative uses of the Web, such as "electronic markets" and online candidate forums. It will culminate in the declaring of a citizen-generated Agenda for the Next Great City to be delivered to the new mayor and Council in 2008. The project is supported by a major grant by the Lenfest Foundation, and other support from Penn, The Inquirer and the Knight Foundation.
I Leaders forums - Nov.-Dec. 2006 Gatherings of regional leaders from various fields: business, education, health care, the arts, foundations, civic organizations, religion. Each two-hour session will invite the group to imagine what Philly would look like in 2015 if it were the Next Great City.
II – Citizen Forums – Jan.-Feb. 2007 Convene 20 or more neighborhood forums for ordinary citizens to do a similar exercise. Data from both sets of forums would provide content for the Web site, identify essayists for the newspaper, and help direct the work of Editorial Board writers who will travel to other cities to identify best practices/solutions. Penn scholars also will contribute to this research into the roots of issues and the possibilities for solution.
III – Issue forums – March-April 2007 Events delving into the top issues identified in the earlier forums. Top experts – from around the region and nation – will discuss the most promising solutions and best practices for addressing a given issue. Each of these forums will be mirrored in Web content and op-ed packages.
IV – Citizen Journalism blitz – All of 2007 We will recruit, train and equip a team of citizen journalists to cover every election-related event and issue from their perspectives. This will be ongoing project of the Web site.
V – Electronic Markets – Feb. to May 2007, then Sept. to Nov. 2007 On the Web site, we will run two reader-participation “electronic markets/polls,” one on the election horse race a la the Iowa Electronic market, a second “merit poll” using the Patriot Dollars concepts to allow people to vote on which candidates are behaving best/worst on the campaign trail.
VI – Deliberation Day – May 5 An all-day series of election-related events culminating in a candidates TV debate at a suitable site. In the a.m. of this Saturday, 10 neighborhood sessions will be held (one in each Council district). There citizens will come together to quiz representatives of the mayoral candidates on their stands; based on those discussions, they will propose questions for the mayoral debate that night. The best will be chosen by the paper and the broadcast sponsor to be asked that night. In Council districts with a contested race, candidate debates will be held to conclude the morning sessions.
VII – At-large Council Debate - A week or so before Election Day. The Inquirer will sponsor this debate, hopefully with a broadcast partner.
VIII – Issue Framing – Summer through fall 2007 The Editorial Board will build upon the citizen input and its reporting to frame the key issues facing the city as a set of choices. Those choices will be presented in paper and online, with a continuous polling mechanism to get usable feedback from the public on which choices they favor.
IX – Fall mayoral and council debates October 2008 Repeat spring processes.
X – Agenda drafting - Fall 2007 Immediately following the election, The Inquirer will present a draft Agenda for a Next Great City
XI – Agenda convention – early December 2007 A regionwide convention to solicit feedback and suggestions on the draft agenda.
XII – Next Great City inauguration event In the week before the new mayor and Council take office, The Inquirer will publish its final agenda, revised based on public input. At a major event, participants in the Next Great City Agenda project will present the final agenda to the newly elected mayor and council and seek their response and commitments.
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Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about Great Expectations: Citizens Voices on Philadelphia’s Future. For a project description and timeline, see the project home page at http://www.fels.upenn.edu/greatexpectations.htm.
If you have a question that isn’t answered here, please send an email to great-expecations@sas.upenn.edu or call 215.898.1112 and it will be added to this FAQ.
Q. So who’s behind this anyway?
1. And Citizen Voices, what’s that?
Q. And the Lenfest Foundation, what’s its role?
Q. Isn’t that a little unusual, a newspaper taking a grant from a local foundation?
Q. But, wait, didn’t I read something about Gerry Lenfest giving a big donation to one of the mayoral candidates?
Q. OK, but The Inquirer will be endorsing candidates for mayor and Council, won’t it?
Q. OK, enough about the bigwigs. If I join up, what’s in for me? What am I in for?
Q. So what will happen at one of these forums in January and February? What do I have to do to prepare? What am I supposed to contribute? I’m no expert.
Q. You keep mentioning the region? Does this mean suburbanites can take part?
Q. Wait, is that fair? Where do suburbanites get off telling city voters what to do?
Q. OK, maybe I’d like to go to one of these forums in January; try it out. I see you’ve got them set for sites in bunch of city neighborhoods. But the one in my neighborhood is on a bad night for me. Can I go to one in another neighborhood?
Q. What will be done with all this citizen opinion?
1. How will I be kept posted on project events, opportunities and reports?
Q. I see something about trying electronic markets? What are those?
Q. So who’s behind this anyway?
Great Expectations is a joint project of The Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board and the Project on Civic Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. The Editorial Board is a small group of senior journalists charged with writing opinion pieces (editorials and columns) for the paper. It has no control over news coverage.
The Project on Civic Engagement is a new effort at the university jointly funded by the Office of the Provost, the Annenberg School for Communication and the Fels Institute of Government. It is housed as Fels. PCE’s faculty director is Harris Sokoloff of the Graduate School of Education, a leading national expert on civic dialogue.
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- And Citizen Voices, what’s that?
Citizen Voices is the civic deliberation program of The Inquirer, founded in 1994 by Chris Satullo, editorial page editor, and Harris Sokoloff. Since then, Citizens Voices has staged hundreds of events to give citizens of the region a chance to name, frame, discuss and propose solutions to issues facing the region and nation. It has done numerous major projects on election campaigns, including one on the Philadelphia mayoral race in 1999 that earned the paper the James Batten Award for Civic Journalism. It co-sponsored the Penn’s Landing Forums in 2003 and the Franklin Conference on School Design in 2005, projects which enabled local citizens to add their voices and their ideas to public debates about the city’s riverfront and its school system. Over that time, Inquirer journalists on both the opinion and news sides of the shop have used these civic dialogues to inform their reporting on issues.
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Q. And the Lenfest Foundation, what’s its role?
The Lenfest Foundation, a local organization founded by H.F. (Gerry) and Marguerite Lenfest, has given a major grant to underwrite the public events that are part of its project. The university has also given significant financial support; the newspaper is dedicating space in the paper and much staff time to the effort, including the time of Satullo and columnist Tom Ferrick, who will be lead writer on the project.
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Q. Isn’t that a little unusual, a newspaper taking a grant from a local foundation?
Actually, the newspaper is not taking any grant money. The Lenfest funds go to the Fels Institute of Government at Penn to support project activities, including the hiring of project staff and Web site design and maintenance. This kind of formal partnership of newspaper, university and foundation used to be rare, but is becoming a little more common. In fact, the very same model was used in previous, award-winning Citizen Voices projects such as Citizen Voices 1999, the Penn’s Landing Forums and the Franklin Conference on School Design.
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Q. But, wait, didn’t I read something about Gerry Lenfest giving a big donation to one of the mayoral candidates?
True, Mr. Lenfest as an individual gave $200,000 to U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a leading candidate for mayor. The Foundation does not make political donations. The partners in the project realized that this donation does create an awkward situation, and much discussion occurred before a decision was made to proceed with the partnership. While the foundation has of course consulted about the design of the project, Mr. Lenfest has agreed not to do anything to shape the project conduct or outcomes in any way that could appear to favor one political candidate.
Also, this project is not about the mayor’s race per se; it uses the occasion of mayoral and City Council races in Philadelphia to invite the people of the region to embark on a conversation about how the city and region can realize their potential as the Next Great City. Its main goal is write a citizen-driven Agenda for the Next Great City, a plan of ambitious but practical steps the city and region could take to address their problems and meet their potential. The agenda is to be presented to the new mayor and Council when they take office in 2008, then progress on the agenda will be monitored going forward.
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Q. OK, but The Inquirer will be endorsing candidates for mayor and Council, won’t it?
Yes. But the foundation and university will have no say in those decisions. They will be decided as endorsements usually are by the paper’s publisher and Editorial Board. The journalists of the Editorial Board will be involved heavily in the Great Expectations project, to guide their commentary on city issues and solutions, and will weigh citizen input in their endorsements.
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Q. OK, enough about the bigwigs. If I join up, what’s in for me? What am I in for?
A good time. Seriously. Citizen Voices participants have consistently told how enjoyable they find the opportunity these in-person dialogues provide to meet people they might otherwise not meet, to have civil but freewheeling conversations about issues that matter, to be treated as though their opinion counts, then too see things happen in the public arena that prove it really did count.
You can take part in as many or as few live events as you like, ranging from small forums in your neighborhoods to citywide forums to candidate debates. There will be a dozen or more opportunities in the course of the year. If you just want to follow the project online and in the paper, posting comments on blogs and writing essays in response to prompts from The Inquirer, that’s fine, too. We just want you to make your voice heard in a way that makes sense for you.
You can sign up online, using the form on this project Web page; or fill out the printed coupon that will be appearing regular on the editorial pages of the paper.
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Q. So what will happen at one of these forums in January and February? What do I have to do to prepare? What am I supposed to contribute? I’m no expert.
You’re a citizen of this region, and you’re an expert on what it’s like to be you and to live here. You are an expert on the way that the city thrills, disappoints, satisfies or frustrates you. That’s all you need to know to make a valuable contribution. These January forums are about citizens sitting together and sharing views. No one sits at a table in front and lectures you. No one lines up at a mike to yell at politicians. (At these events, if candidates attend, they are there ony to observe and listen, not talk.) It’s just citizens talking together about how to make their city and region work better.
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Q. You keep mentioning the region? Does this mean suburbanites can take part?
Absolutely. We very much want suburban voices included.
Q. Wait, is that fair? Where do suburbanites get off telling city voters what to do?
First, the goal of this project is write an agenda for the whole region, because Philadelphia can only become great if the whole region works together. Second, that can happen only if city residents and suburbanites have better conversations to find common ground on issues. Third, many suburbanites work in, pay heavy taxes to and care deeply about the city. They have a legitimate personal stake in how well the next crop of city leaders performs.
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Q. OK, maybe I’d like to go to one of these forums in January; try it out. I see you’ve got them set for sites in bunch of city neighborhoods. But the one in my neighborhood is on a bad night for me. Can I go to one in another neighborhood?
Certainly. Attend whichever one you like. Just let us know your first two choices on the signup form.
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Q. What will be done with all this citizen opinion?
Many participants will be invited to write their views for the paper or the Web site. Inquirer journalists will use the citizen input to guide them in what issues they explore, what questions they ask, what possible solutions they report on during the city elections. It will guide the project leader in deciding which issues to focus future events around. And it will begin shaping the eventual Agenda for the Next Great City.
- How will I be kept posted on project events, opportunities and reports?
Once you’re on our email list, you’ll get regular email updates. Also, a project Web site (still under development) will have full calendars of events, daily news and commentary updates, and lots of opportunities for citizen input.
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Q. I see something about trying electronic markets? What are those?
Electronic markets enable people essentially to buy and sell shares in the prospects of political candidates, or in other political or policy propositions. In some cases, the shares involve real money; other times, play money. Either way, research has shown that such interactive markets have proven at least as good and often far better than professional pollsters at predicting the results of elections. For information on the first, nonprofit electronic market, the Iowa Electronic Markets, go to www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/
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