leadership – Page 3 – Sheila Kennedy

The Real Choices

Matt Tully’s column yesterday addressed the reasons prompting families to move from the city to the suburbs. It was a reasonable analysis of a trend that is probably older than he is–unexceptional, so far as it went. For many residents, family or job considerations may limit them to this choice between living in town and moving to, say, Hamilton Country, but for many others, city versus suburb does not exhaust the available options.

A number of us value and prefer urban living. Indeed, a not inconsiderable number of people find the prospect of huge yards, distant neighbors and miles-long drives to the nearest grocery distinctly unappealing. For us, the choice is not between downtown and the suburbs, but between cities. Indianapolis can’t compete with the suburbs for people who want suburban lives. It can and should compete with other places that offer urban amenities and lifestyles. We’ve come a long way down the road that Bill Hudnut built during his four terms as Mayor, but we’ve lost ground the past few years. My son made that point in a response to Tully’s column, on which he copied me.

Here’s his response.

Matt: I read your article about the choice people face between Indy and outlying counties. You make some good points… But as a longtime downtown dweller, I come at this from a different perspective: the challenges we face, and the failures of our leadership to honestly confront them, make me wonder whether we should consider a different CITY, not a suburb.

I grew up downtown Indy, mostly in historic Lockerbie — I thought I’d never return to Indy after leaving for college (in 1987). After college/living/working in Chicago and years of travel, I moved back to Indy – largely because Indy’s downtown had come so far, and Indy’s city experience had improved so much. Finally, Indy had a mix of urban amenities, shopping, culture (and I am not referring to sports venues, though they are nice, if overly dependent on taxpayers) and, importantly, an easy environment in which to raise kids. Today, we live downtown in the Old Northside (where we’ve lived since I returned to Indy)… our kids, 9 & 11, go to IPS’ CFI #2 (which we love), and we have a great, and diverse, community of friends, and family nearby.

As I see it, Indianapolis faces two major problems, one of which you allude to in your article. First, our kids educational experience is not available to everyone: great public schools, like CFI, have too few available slots. And while Indy must address this deficiency if it is to succeed and thrive, our City suffers other problems that (*gasp*) require resources to address: crime, infrastructure, affordable and dependable public transportation, among other things. Which highlights the second major problem — a lack/failure of leadership. Our leadership fails us when they buy into (and promote) the notion that Indy needs lower taxes more than it needs better schools, lower crime, or better/workable public transportation that meets the needs of our residents and workforce. While government needs to operate “efficiently,” we should not try to compete with Boone County to be “low tax” place, a fight we can’t win and shouldn’t try to win; instead, we should recognize the strength of our “product” — the CITY — and its amenities. We need to recognize the need for (and fight for) the resources to make it great.

Instead, in the name of “efficiency,” the city gives away to a contractor literally millions of dollars every year (by some estimates $500 million over time) of potential city revenue that could be used to fight crime, build/maintain infrastructure. Why? Either because it lacks the imagination or operational competence to see that the city can upgrade parking meters (inexpensively) and operate them for ourselves… And while it would be nice to see the political courage to argue for more resources, the city administration fails to even try to lobby/work the legislature to alter the formula for distribution of income tax revenue so that it is not distributed 100% to the county where people live, but instead is shared, even if just a little bit. These are just two of many examples…

The failure to even try … The failure of vision and the lack of any attempt is frustrating. A friend recently moved out of state because he sees in our political leadership the operating mantra of “mediocre is good enough.” As you noted the other day, Guv Pence states his “ambition is the status quo” (and while he said it of gambling, he might as well have said about everything, since his most active push is for a tax cut for which there is NO evidence it will create a single job). This is not a critique of the many dedicated public servants who “try,” but of the political class that doesn’t.

Unlike those readers who assume its a choice between Indianapolis and Hamilton/Johnson Counties, it isn’t for me. It’s a choice between an Indianapolis that withers on the vine and a better city where more of the residents and their leaders “get it” — and fight for it.

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Why Can’t Indy Do Stuff Like This??

Trust Neil Pierce to give us a peek at what cities can be. And of course, New York is leading the way–under a Mayor who has done an incredible job of making the Big Apple both livable and hip. Pierce describes the new touch-screen kiosks that are being unveiled first in New York’s Union Square–new technology that will not only make city life more convenient, informative and safer, but will generate revenue to boot.

Whatever your impressions of Mayor Bloomberg as a person or politician, his impact on the daily life of the city is undeniable. Since our middle son moved to Manhattan, my husband and I get into New York a couple of times a year, and we’ve seen the changes: bike paths everywhere; inviting riverside parks; pedestrian-friendly walks and mid-street cafes where horn-honking cars used to dominate. The city is rolling out a bike-sharing program with an initial supply of ten thousand bicycles. It is well into the redevelopment of west-side Manhattan–our son lives in a spiffy new tower, complete with doorman and upscale amenities in a neighborhood I wouldn’t have walked in ten years ago, not far from the triumph that is the High Line.

In fact, the High Line is a perfect symbol for the City under Bloomberg. It was an eyesore–an abandoned elevated train track. Most cities would have torn it down; New York turned it into a park so successful that it attracts tourists from around the world and has generated some two billion dollars in adjacent redevelopment.

A city that can turn an eyesore into an amenity is worth emulating, even if you can’t get a 32-ounce soda there.

Next month, we’ll be visiting our son, and I’m making a beeline for Union Square. I’m going to be one of the first to try out the new kiosks. I’ll need to do it there, because if the past few years are any indication, it will be a long time before Indianapolis gets them. We were late getting even the few bike lanes we have, and no one has even suggested that we introduce a bike-sharing program, although cities from New York to Charlotte have done so. Our parks depend on charity for their continued existence. Public transportation is next to nonexistent. On a per-capita basis, New York is safer.

When we do something big, like hosting the Super Bowl, the impetus and the execution come from the private sector. If anyone in the Mayor’s office or on the City-Country Council is thinking big, or proposing innovative ways to improve livability in our city, they’re keeping it a secret.

Of course, we can buy really big sodas.

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Music for World-Class Cities

When I was in City Hall back in the late 1970s, the goal was to make Indianapolis a “world class” city. That wasn’t just the rhetoric used by the Mayor and his administration–it was echoed by the City Committee (now long defunct) and by the Lilly Endowment, which facilitated the goal with generous grants.

The decision to make Indianapolis into an amateur sports capital wasn’t made because city leaders loved sports, although many surely did. It was based on a hard-headed analysis of where we might have a comparative advantage. The goal was city-building, and sports were a means to that end.

That was then, and now is now. There is no longer a City Committee, and the Endowment–while still generous and immensely important to Indianapolis– no longer partners with elected officials to improve Indianapolis as it did then. Our current Mayor is not a visionary (to put it kindly). Making matters worse, Indianapolis has lost many of the corporate headquarters and locally-owned banks from which we used to draw private-sector civic leadership.

Now, we are in danger of seeing the Indianapolis Symphony–a symphony befitting a world-class city, a symphony of which we have been justifiably proud–become a part-time (read “second-class”) enterprise.

The Symphony is facing significant financial problems. It will obviously be important to determine the cause of those problems–poor portfolio management? Unfavorable labor contract? Other? I certainly haven’t a clue, and few outside the Board and musicians themselves are likely to have even a reasonable hypothesis.

But I do know one thing: in addition to being a beloved part of our city’s cultural scene and a point of pride, the symphony is important to our local economy.

Nationally, nonprofit arts organizations generate $135 billion in economic activity annually, supporting 4.1 million jobs and generating $22.3 billion in government revenue. Investment in the arts supports jobs, generates tax revenues, promotes tourism, and advances our increasingly creativity-based economy. The typical arts attendee spends $24.60 per person, per event, not including the cost of admission, on items such as meals, parking, and babysitters. Attendees who live outside the county in which the arts event takes place spend twice as much as their local counterparts.

A symphony season has far more impact on the local economy than football. Early in my academic career, I worked on a paper with an expert in the economic impact of sports. Such impact as exists is by virtue of intangibles–the value of raising the profile of the city with the team, that sort of thing. There was no direct dollar benefit. Despite that lack of immediate economic impact, we pump large amounts of public money into privately-owned sports teams and venues.

To the best of my knowledge, no public money flows to the symphony and a mere pittance is distributed among other arts organizations in the city. The arts have clearly not been a priority.

I am not suggesting that long-term public funding is the answer to the symphony’s current problems. Obviously, figuring out what happened, correcting missteps as possible, and developing a plan for future sustainability is critical, but that process takes time. If Indianapolis weren’t so starved for revenue, some sort of “bridge” loan or grant to keep the symphony going during that time would make a lot of sense, because keeping something important is easier and less costly than trying to rebuild it once it is gone.

Indianapolis used to understand that world-class cities require constant attention and inspired leadership. These days we don’t seem to have either.

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Let There Be Spin…

I see that both of our Mayoral candidates are planning to go up with television commercials within the next day or so. We will be inundated with political ads soon enough–not just from Melina Kennedy and Greg Ballard, but also from candidates for the legislature and council.

These ads do provide us with information, although not necessarily the information the candidates intend to provide. You can tell a lot about a candidate by analyzing the messages they are willing to air: how fair are their criticisms of their opponent(s)? How accurate and honest are their presentations of their own accomplishments? Do they have a vision for the City, and if so, how compelling is that vision?

Several years ago, Morton Marcus and I wrote a “he said/she said” series of columns for the IBJ called Letters to the Next Mayor. The candidates back then were Sue Ann Gilroy and a political unknown named Bart Peterson. I dug my first column for that series out of my files, and was bemused to note how much of what I wrote remains relevant. Here is that column.

“This year, voters in Indianapolis will elect either Sue Ann Gilroy or Bart Peterson to lead our City into the new millenium.

Being Mayor in any year is a demanding job. A good chief executive must fill multiple job descriptions: manager, cheerleader, communicator, visionary. A Mayor, more than any other elected official, gives the community its identity, its sense of itself.

During the upcoming campaign, there will be discussion and debate about a number of issues. But there is a danger in focussing too intently on the specific administrative tasks at hand, because the next Mayor must be much more than a manager/technocrat. The next Mayor must help us create an inclusive, civil and progressive community with a shared vision of its problems and possibilities.

Over the next months, Morton and I will highlight specific problems our next Mayor will inherit: a troubled police department, beleagured schools, racial tensions, environmental issues, runaway debt levels, and many others. People of good will hold dramatically different positions on these issues. If they are to be resolved, we will need political leadership of the highest order. The ability to provide that leadership must rank as the single most important issue of the campaign.

Indianapolis is part of the phenomenon some call, aptly, the “niching” of America. Commercial enterprises deal in market segmentation; political institutions respond to special interests; even the daily newspaper prints different editions for different neighborhoods. We have lost sight of a central reality: we are all in this together. What happens in any part of our city affects the rest of us in a multitude of ways, tangible and intangible. When we retreat to our respective neighborhoods, churches, professional associations or social groups, we lose civic synergy. We lose pride of joint enterprise, the sense of belonging to a larger whole. There is a huge difference between a city and an accidental agglomeration of adjacent neighborhoods.

If we are to regain that communal identity and restore that sense of civic pride, the next Mayor must encourage the broadest possible participation in the civic enterprise; it is no longer possible—if it ever was—to administer a municipality from the top down. Cities that work today are cities whose citizens truly own them, and ownership comes from meaningful involvement in the institutions that shape city life. The next Mayor must encourage the participation, and value the contributions, of all our citizens.

Politics at its best is the art of building consensus, and that means recognizing the importance of process. How we get there is ultimately more important than where we go, because results achieved without consensus, without civility, without genuine citizen ownership, do not last. Building consensus ultimately rests on trust. Trust is reciprocal; it is a byproduct of dialogue and collaboration To earn it, the next Mayor must preside over an open and forthcoming administration, recognizing that every question is not a criticism and every criticism is not an attack..

Indianapolis faces challenges, but we also have substantial assets. We are a fundamentally sound city, with thoughtful and involved civic leadership, a robust nonprofit sector, impressive public institutions, and the fortunate habit—fostered by Unigov—of thinking of ourselves as an urban whole. Whether we use those assets to rebuild our sense of community or allow our divisions to overwhelm us will depend in large measure on the leadership skills of the next Mayor.”

At the time that was written, Indianapolis was still a city on the move, and the major argument was over the direction of that movement. Today, I would characterize Indianapolis as a city in stasis, struggling to provide even basic services and floundering when it comes to the big issues. We have yet to make substantial improvements in most of the problems I identified 12 years ago (I would argue that we have actually lost ground on several during the past four years). There has been a palpable absence of vision. Mayor Ballard is a very nice man, but he came into office with absolutely no background in city management, economic development, policing, education or other municipal policies. The question to ask as you look at his campaign ads is: what has he learned? Has he developed the knowledge and skills that would justify giving him another term? Or is he still over his head?

The questions we should ask when we look at Melina Kennedy’s ads are similar. Do they display a coherent vision for the city? A genuine grasp of the issues we face?

Deciding which candidate is most likely to provide the leadership we so desperately need requires that we look beyond the “spin cycle.”

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The Value of Pontificating

I’ve been scanning the local news I missed during the past month, and duly noted coverage of a recent speech by Melina Kennedy on education. Kennedy (no relation–honest!) has focused her mayoral campaign on public safety, education and economic development, and has been delivering substantive proposals on those and related issues.

In her education speech, she criticized Greg Ballard for a lack of leadership in education, pointing out that he has done little other than continue the charter school initiative begun by Mayor Peterson. Asked for his response to the criticism, Ballard said that just because he hadn’t been “pontificating” about the subject didn’t mean he hadn’t been engaged.

Wrong.

The biggest problem faced by educators today isn’t whether a school is public or private. It isn’t whether reading instruction is via phonics or “whole word” methodology. It isn’t even discipline. The biggest problem is cultural: Americans today do not value education. If we do not change the culture, nothing else we do is going to work. And let me be VERY clear: I am not talking about the regrettable tendency of some inner-city black students to label peers getting good grades as “acting white.” I am talking about the broader American disdain for expertise of any sort–the widespread attitude that intellectuals are “elitists” to be scorned.

There is a long history of anti-intellectualism in this country, and it has clearly been on the ascendance for the past decade or more. The mere fact that anyone takes political figures like Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann or Mike Pence seriously ought to be evidence enough that the American electorate prioritizes celebrity and pandering over substance. A terrifying percentage of the American public rejects science–whether the subject is global climate change or even something as basic and settled as evolution. Stephen Colbert has captured our current culture brilliantly in his riffs explaining why he elevates his “gut” over the exercise of reason.

This is the culture we need to change, and we cannot and will not change it unless those we elect make it their business to “pontificate” about the importance of education. Real leadership requires political figures who are willing to elevate the value of knowledge and expertise–who are willing to remind citizens that this country was a product of the Enlightenment, a philosophy that prioritized reason, evidence and intellect.

A Mayor who fails to use the bully pulpit on behalf of those values is not “pontificating.” S/he is leading.