Greetings From Charlotte
I can’t believe that it’s already Friday and I didn’t post my update to this site all week. I’m attending the National League of Cities (www.NLC.org ) Congress of Cities conference in Charlotte, NC. Over 3500 elected officials representing 1200 cities across the US are here.
To say that we’ve been kept very busy is an understatement. I’d met and exchanged ideas about the role of a city council member with others at workgroups, panel discussions, breaks, over lunch, at the exhibit hall, the elevator … you name it. What a great opportunity to learn from others. Elected officials from cities big and small, North, South, East, West, or like us, from the Mid-West, share very common problems, very common values, very common desires for their communities.
I spent Tuesday and Wednesday attending all day workshops presented by the Leadership Training Institute – The Six Essential Tools of Public Service and an especially helpful workshop for me, Public Problems; Democratic Solutions. This last one I hope will help me become more sensitive to the public values each of us has so that I might work better with you and the other council members to develop a solution that recognizes these difference values and is truly a “win-win” solution that we both agree on.
Thursday and Friday were filled with excellent speakers among them being Robert Reisch, former Secretary of Labor. Anthony Williams, Mayor of Washington DC, is the NLC president and he’s a real interesting character as well.
Besides the General Opening Sessions I spent the last two days attending a wide variety of workshops; Expanding Your Local Economy Using technology to Promote Citizen Involvement; Strengthening Community Through Participatory Governance; Eminent Domain in a Post-Kelo Environment (NO! We aren’t planning to take your house away to build a shopping center! Just getting info. ) and Can Blogs Improve Your Constituent Communications? ( and I’m hoping and betting “Yes”. That’s why I hope you’re reading this.)
Just returned from a mobile workshop on Revitalizing Your Neighborhoods. Amazing what they’ve done.
We’ve got one more day of sessions, tomorrow, Saturday.
Then next week we’re going to pour through the line-by-line detail of the city budget. Here’s your chance to help us by attending the sessions and letting us know what you think we should cut down on, do away with, or even what you want to make sure we don’t do anything real dumb and do away with. Wrote about this in a previous posting so check it out.
From the South, “See y’all later now, hear?”
To say that we’ve been kept very busy is an understatement. I’d met and exchanged ideas about the role of a city council member with others at workgroups, panel discussions, breaks, over lunch, at the exhibit hall, the elevator … you name it. What a great opportunity to learn from others. Elected officials from cities big and small, North, South, East, West, or like us, from the Mid-West, share very common problems, very common values, very common desires for their communities.
I spent Tuesday and Wednesday attending all day workshops presented by the Leadership Training Institute – The Six Essential Tools of Public Service and an especially helpful workshop for me, Public Problems; Democratic Solutions. This last one I hope will help me become more sensitive to the public values each of us has so that I might work better with you and the other council members to develop a solution that recognizes these difference values and is truly a “win-win” solution that we both agree on.
Thursday and Friday were filled with excellent speakers among them being Robert Reisch, former Secretary of Labor. Anthony Williams, Mayor of Washington DC, is the NLC president and he’s a real interesting character as well.
Besides the General Opening Sessions I spent the last two days attending a wide variety of workshops; Expanding Your Local Economy Using technology to Promote Citizen Involvement; Strengthening Community Through Participatory Governance; Eminent Domain in a Post-Kelo Environment (NO! We aren’t planning to take your house away to build a shopping center! Just getting info. ) and Can Blogs Improve Your Constituent Communications? ( and I’m hoping and betting “Yes”. That’s why I hope you’re reading this.)
Just returned from a mobile workshop on Revitalizing Your Neighborhoods. Amazing what they’ve done.
We’ve got one more day of sessions, tomorrow, Saturday.
Then next week we’re going to pour through the line-by-line detail of the city budget. Here’s your chance to help us by attending the sessions and letting us know what you think we should cut down on, do away with, or even what you want to make sure we don’t do anything real dumb and do away with. Wrote about this in a previous posting so check it out.
From the South, “See y’all later now, hear?”
posted by Bob Nowicki | 6:02 PM
1 Comments:
bob, what would you think of presenting a 15 minute overview of the charlotte sessions and workshops at the next rneighbors board meeting, wednesday, the 21st? each has relevance for neighborhoods and participation.
thanks.
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