Washington, D.C.
October 18-20, 1995
Patricia Reichler, Project Manager
Diversity and Local Governance Project
National League of Cities
Last July, 500 community leaders representing government, business, education, and the media came to Washington to attend a very unique conference on the future of America’s cities. The conference was arranged by Nations Bank, and it was called Blueprint 2000.
At the conclusion of the conference, Nations Bank issued a report pointing out that, whether the focus is urban or rural, jobs or housing, there are some key issues to creating a bright future for America’s cities.
“Accepting and working successfully within an increasingly diverse America,” they said, “is the nation’s single largest challenge affecting community building. If we are afraid of each other, full of hate for each other, or discriminate against one another, how can we expect to build communities that are livable? Within our increased diversity,” they concluded, “we must work together to build a civil society.”
Your conference theme, “Partnerships That Shape The Future,” reflects this same awareness that we must all pursue new partnerships in order to create an educated citizenry and safe, stable, and sustainable communities.
The National League of Cities (NLC) was founded in 1924 and represents a series of partnerships; the partnerships of city governments with each other, with other cities in their state, with other states in their region, and, ultimately, on a national level with other stakeholders and policy makers who are forming unified positions on how to deal with the challenges facing the cities of America.
We represent 49 state leagues (the one missing is Hawaii), which in turn represent more than 17,000 cities and towns. We represent 88 percent of all the cities and towns in America.
Within the National League of Cities, we have policy committees and constituency groups that focus on particular priorities and concerns. One of the most active constituency groups that we have is the University Community Caucus, which is chaired by Michael Shore, the Deputy Mayor of Mansfield, Connecticut. The purpose of this constituency is to build partnerships between cities and universities.
The project on Diversity and Local Governance is part of the National League of Cities’ Research Center and was created to help municipal officials understand and deal with the implications of demographic changes in their cities. The people who live and work in America’s cities may be more different from each other now than at any other period in our history. By the year 2000 white men will be a minority of those entering the workforce. By the year 2000 Hispanics will be our largest minority group. By the year 2000 more than 60 percent of women over the age of 16 will be at work, and already one in seven children over the age of five speaks a language other than English in their homes.
Being able to represent others’ views is essential for city officials, but how many of today’s elected officials have had a life experience similar to the constituencies they represent? Yet planning for tomorrow’s communities is occurring today, just as educating is for tomorrow. In our conversations with city officials, we emphasize that diversity should not be viewed as a separate and distinct issue, but rather one of the many factors that contribute to the changing face of our communities.
The goal of diversity is not to create a melting pot; trying to make everyone the same is neither realistic nor healthy. As Paul Elair, chairman of the Council on Competitiveness, put it recently, “If you give a problem to two people who think exactly alike, one of them is unnecessary.” America could better be described as a patchwork quilt, a reflection of the rich differences we each contribute, bound closely together by our common threads. To deal effectively with issues that may arise because of this diversity requires not a separate set of programs and activities, but an awareness and an understanding that permeates the entire strategic planning process.
In 1991, as part of NLC’s strategic planning, we established what we call our “Futures” process. Through this process every year the vice president selects a critical issue that represents a significant change in the world around us, a change that challenges city officials to better address the needs of their communities. This year the issue is how cities can become lifelong learning communities. This year’s Futures report states that “the knowledge-based economy of the future calls for new thinking, new solutions, and new partnerships that bring all segments of the community together to address local workforce development and lifelong learning needs.”
The committee, which is made up of mayors and city council people from around the country, concluded that “a community’s capacity to provide a continuum of learning experiences from pre-school through retirement may well be the most critical determining factor in evaluating the local economic growth and health in the years ahead.”
Creating an environment for lifelong learning depends on today’s leaders being able to actively involve people of different ethnicities, cultures, ages, lifestyles, and languages in the process of government. They need to be involved in overcoming alienation, in developing more effective service delivery systems, and in contributing to a shared vision for the future of our communities.
One dramatic example of how diversity cuts across all aspects of local governance occurred in the City of Wausau, Wisconsin. In the 1980 census, Wausau was listed as the most ethnically homogeneous city in the nation. This was not news to the people of Wausau, and in fact, a few years earlier a group of churches and individuals had decided to participate in the Federal government’s program for the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees as one means of bringing diversity to their community.
In a little more than a decade, the families from Southeast Asia had become one quarter of the school population in a city which had no ESL (English as a Second Language) program at all. Seventy percent of the immigrants are now receiving public assistance because the local labor market was not able to accommodate them. The tax rate has grown 11 percent, more than three times as much as the taxes in the adjoining school district.
The challenges facing Wausau have been enormous. John Robinson, former Mayor of Wausau, acknowledged in a recent news article that no government agency at any stage of Wausau’s transformation had talked about immigration rates or developed a community-wide planning process to project or prepare for these demographic changes. He said, “The Southeast Asian evolution in Wausau was not a planned process. It was sort of a happening.”
The City of San Marcos, Texas, was faced with a similar dramatic increase in the immigrant population. Located between Austin and San Antonio, this city’s population has also grown explosively in recent years. Enrollment at Southwestern Texas State University has increased significantly, computer industries have located to the area, and the city has attracted an increasing number of immigrants, but few of them have the educational backgrounds or skills necessary to take the computer jobs that are being created.
In response to these changing conditions, the City of San Marcos has established a Lifelong Learning Center through the public library. Through a variety of partnerships, the city is able to provide a wide range of learning experiences. The Texas Education Agency supplies experienced teachers, the Private Industry Council supplies teachers and supplies, and the Southwest Texas State University Office of Minority Affairs provides academic and financial aid counseling to the library learners.
At a Futures forum on diversity a few years ago, cities identified key issues that they felt affected their ability to attract and maintain a diverse workforce. Some of the questions they discussed were as follows.
First, how can we move from the narrow concept of affirmative action to the broader concept of diversity? How can we respond to the influx of immigrants who are applicants for jobs but have limited English proficiency? How can we eliminate artificial barriers that keep qualified minorities and women from being promoted to upper level jobs? What types of training and development programs are needed now to prepare for the workforce of the year 2000? How can the strides we have made in hiring women and minorities be protected when a city has to downsize and cut budgets? How can a backlash and claims of reverse discrimination be avoided in our attempts to be inclusive and pro-active on these issues?
Cities are at the forefront of a changing America. They have a responsibility and an opportunity to take a leadership role in anticipating future trends and addressing the needs of citizens in a way that fosters not only tolerance but acceptance, inclusion, and celebration.
Harsh and destructive polarization, exclusion, and isolation must be avoided if we are to preserve the fabric of our communities. As the ancient Athenian oath of citizenship states, “We seek to transmit the city not less but greater, better, and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”
Thank you.