July 2002

Hello, and welcome to the July issue of the National Civic League's email newsletter. This monthly communication will provide information on the activities and accomplishments of NCL and links to information on a variety of topics relating to NCL's mission.

The National Civic League is a 108-year-old non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to strengthening citizen democracy by transforming democratic institutions. NCL accomplishes its mission through technical assistance, training, publishing, research, and the All-America City Award. The National Civic League is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and has an office in Washington, D.C. For more information, call 303-571-4343 or visit www.ncl.org.

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1. The American Assembly and Colorado Conversations 2002
2. Student Voices
3. Model City Charter Revision Project Update
4. Community Services Updates
5. Upcoming Newsletters
6. ANR: Things You Can Do For Your Community
7. Civic Index Feature

The National Civic League and The American Assembly hosted a special supplementary session of Colorado Conversations 2002 on Thursday July 11th.

The event served as a kick off for The American Assembly's National Dialogue, a series of regional and local community dialogues focused on some of the most divisive issues in American society. A wide-range of cooperating organizations like the National Civic League will sponsor and organize hundreds of community dialogues over the next year.

By utilizing the infrastructure created during Colorado Conversations 2002, participants built on previous sessions and discussed issues of racial equity in Denver. Judith Winston, former Executive Director of The President's Initiative on Race, served as a keynote speaker for the session.

The conversation focused what the Denver Metro Area could do to improve race relations and the appreciation of Denver's growing diversity. At the end of the conversation the group endorsed the following recommendations:

1. The leadership in Denver needs to be included in dialogues about race. Constituents need to hold their leaders accountable if they are not at the discussion table.
2. Bring the issue of race to the table when addressing the controversial issues that exist today, like affirmative action and English language in the schools.
3. Convene a Metro Chamber Summit - composed of the Black, Denver, Hispanic and Women's Chambers in Denver.
4. Analyze how we perpetuate racial stereotypes in the education system.
5. Create youth programs that confront racial issues and also train school administration to be conscious of race issues.
6. Newspaper articles and race reporters need to bring about awareness of the diversity that exists in the Denver Metro Area.

For more information on The American Assembly's National Dialogue series please visit their homepage or the Uniting America website. For assistance in beginning dialogues in your community around crucial issues, please contact the National Civic League at www.ncl.org or via phone at 303-571-4343.

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Sponsored by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, the Student Voices Program strives to encourage active civic and political engagement of students with their neighborhoods and schools, as well as with the press and political aspirants. The program is intended to increase students' knowledge and understanding of political processes and institutions, as well as their ability to find information and make use of it as evidence in argument and rhetoric. Ultimately, the objective is to increase voting and improve the competence of individuals to participate in the public sphere.

Denver Student Voices is part of the National Student Voices Project, an initiative of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Denver Student Voices, administered locally by the National Civic League, is funded by the Annenberg Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Project was pioneered in 33 Philadelphia public high schools in 1999. Participating students were found to increase their use of substantive media as a research tool, as well as their level of political learning, civic engagement and voting. As a result of this success in Philadelphia, the project expanded nationwide in 2000.

Student Voices has now been implemented successfully in Los Angeles, San Antonio, New York, Detroit, Newark, Tulsa, and Seattle. If you are interested in reading about these cities and others, please visit the Student Voices website at http://student-voices.org/.

Over the next five years, the National Student Voices Project will support local civic education projects in 22 cities throughout the country. In Denver, the project involves the participation of classes in 12 Denver public high schools. Denver Student Voices participating schools include: Career Education Center; Contemporary Learning Center; Denver School of the Arts; East High School; George Washington; John F. Kennedy; Manual; Montbello; North High School; South High School; Thomas Jefferson; and West High School.

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The National Civic League continues to develop the 8th edition of the Model City Charter, a document that has reflected and advanced trends in good local government since NCL first produced the Model in 1900. NCL recently convened the third meeting of the Model Charter Revision Committee on June 11-12, 2002, in Kansas City, Missouri, at the All-America City Awards.

At the meeting, the committee discussed the following issues: charter preambles; ethics provisions affecting local government officials and employees; local campaign finance regulation such as disclosure, contribution caps, and voluntary spending limits; egovernment, i.e., using web sites as sources of information and interactive online government services; the effect of state law on home rule and statutory municipalities; tying government performance measurement and management to the city budget; how to enhance citizen participation in local government; how to encourage cities to cooperate within regions; appointment of the chief administrative officer in cities that have a strong elected executive officer; signature requirements for initiative and referendum petitions; redistricting and appointment of an independent commission to draw the district map; and, recall of elected officials.

NCL will publish the 8th edition of the charter by the end of 2002. The next meeting of the Committee will occur on September 27-28 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the annual conference of the International City/County Management Association. Those interested can learn more about the charter revision process and its subject matter by visiting http://www.ncl.org/npp/charter/index.html or by sending email to Matt Krumme at the National Civic League, mattk@ncl.org.

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Civic Indicators

National Civic League is working on-site with four communities on the Civic Indicators: Quantifying Our Civic Health project funded by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The four communities are: Baltimore, Maryland; Berkely-Charleston-Dorcheter Counties, South Carolina; Jacksonville, Florida; and Routt and Moffat Counties, Colorado. On June 27th and 28th, a meeting of the national advisory council and the partner communities was held to discuss the various experiences and processes utilized to develop civic indicators as well as the next steps of the project. The project is in its second year of the three-year grant.

Citizen-Based Performance Measurement

National Civic League is in the final year of a three-year grant from the Sloan Foundation to implement the citizen-based performance measurement project in Long Beach, California; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Burnsville, Minnesota. The three communities have all successfully engaged citizens in a variety of processes and developed outcomes. In this last stage of the project, the communities are developing the indicators and the methods to collect and track the data. A cross site meeting was held on May 16th where each of the communities shared learnings and challenges of the project.

For more information about Community Services, including contact information and additional project updates, please visit NCL's Community Services website.

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A new issue of Civic Action, NCL's quarterly newsletter will be released later this summer, along with a supplemental New Politics Bulletin insert. Civic Action contains news and updates about NCL program work, as well as feature articles on current events or news related to the mission of the National Civic League.

Civic Action is a publication provided for all NCL members. If you are not a member, you will be able to view an online copy of the newsletter soon after its release at the National Civic League website. This section of the website also contains back issues that you may read to learn more about NCL's mission and activities.

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The Alliance for National Renewal is an intentional community of civic leaders and community builders who collaborate to learn and tell their stories to inspire creative problem solving, imitation, and innovation in pursuit of democratic revitalization and the renewal of civic life. The following ideas are an excerpt from their poster "100 Things You Can Do For Your Community In A New Century".

Things You Can Do For Your Community As Youth

1. Encourage Civic Participation among young people. Fight the stereotypes of generation X as apathetic! Contact Youth Vote (www.youthvote.org or 202-783-4751), or Rock the Vote (www.rockthevote.org).
2. Defend the environment and learn how to organize others. Contact Campus Green Vote, a project of the youth-led Center for Environmental Citizenship (www.envirocitizen.org).
3. Work to make your neighborhood more bike and pedestrian friendly. If you are doing this already contact Earth Force (www.earthforce.org or 703-299-9400).
4. Make positive change in your community. If you have a good idea contact Do Something (www.dosomething.org).
5. Tutor a young person.
6. Encourage youth leadership on boards of directors. Contact Youth on Board for more information (617-623-9900 x1242 or www.youthonboard.org).
7. Join a student service movement. Contact Campus Outreach Opportunity League (COOL) for more information (202-637-7004 or www.cool2serve.org).
8. Work to develop the community service activities of a university or college. Contact Campus Compact for more information (401-867-3950 or www.compact.org).

To learn more about the Alliance for National Renewal, visit their website at www.ncl.org/anr.

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From the 1940s, and until the mid-1970s, citizens looked to their elected officials and the business community (from which many of these officials sprung) to make the decisions that affected their communities' futures.

People assumed that governmental leaders had expertise, experience and access to information unavailable to the rank and file citizenry. Moreover, in general, citizens assumed that the public and private sector leadership had the community's interest at heart, so there was no need for their direct involvement.

The local government, therefore, owned the public agenda, both in terms of ability to set the issues under discussion and to take action upon those issues. Even when mechanisms were established for public input, such as advisory councils and blue ribbon panels, the people who comprised these groups invariably came from similar backgrounds and held like beliefs to those holding governmental positions. Very few voices actually mattered or were represented in the local political process...

Read more of this article by NCL's Derek Okubo...

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