Navigating Change
It's time to rethink our approach toward community goals

Throughout much of American history, cities have been viewed with a certain degree of suspicion. It’s a puzzling piece of our culture. Serving much the same role as the heart in providing the core of strength for many parts of our country, cities – local communities – often have been shoved aside in our collective thinking.

And yet, many Americans would describe themselves as being in love with the European cities they have visited. One speaker was heard recently pointing out the contradictions in our attitudes, noting that many of us spend thousands of dollars traveling to cities abroad only to return home to vote against an almost infinitesimal tax increase to finance public art (or something else perceived by some as being frivolous).

Of course, one person’s frivolity is another person’s quality of life enhancement, and few people are willing to speak up in defense of the latter – particularly when spending public money is involved.

Perhaps we can trace the unwillingness to attach ourselves to community-focused thinking to the fact that Americans pride themselves on their individuality. Our heroes and heroines, after all, are usually those who follow their own path.

Still, even our earliest citizens realized quickly the need to form communities with their fellow pioneers, recognizing that survival depended upon getting along with your neighbors, individualists all.

The subsequent generations brought with them the automobile and suburbia and a consumer-driven way of life that have worked together to put cities and communities – at least as they once existed – on the endangered list.

What is clear today, however, is that city and community life has undergone a dramatic change. As a result, the 21st century requires a new kind of citizenship in communities across our commonwealth and our nation.

We must have a new focus at the local level on a variety of issues. And a very important issue on the list is tax reform. This is a special kind of challenge because the fight is one to reclaim our local communities.

We simply cannot continue to do things the way we always have and expect the outcome to be different. If our communities are struggling to provide the services demanded by citizens, indeed, if they are struggling to ensure their very survival, we have no choice but to find some new approaches.

Our communities are worth saving. We must begin our work by deciding what it is we want our cities, small or large, to be and what kind of work it will take to get us there.

Instead of complaining about taxes, it’s time to explore a much-needed overhaul of the way we approach raising revenue to finance public services and programs that help us reach our goals. Instead of complaining about the candidates for public office, we can acknowledge that every single one of us is as responsible for our collective future as are the few who involve themselves in the elective process.

This isn’t a problem that can be solved for us at the national or state level – although what happens in Frankfort and Washington, D.C. is, of course, important. This is a challenge that reaches down into the places we live and hope to leave in good working order to our children and their children.

We are all citizens of the state, nation and world. But we also are very much citizens of our neighborhoods, and we need to begin acting like it. We have grown accustomed, as consumers, to getting what we want when we want it. But things don’t always work like that in the complexities of civic life – and that is a reality we must start to recognize.

Find talk of tax reform boring? Then think about it this way: What will the future hold for our hometowns if we fail to make some meaningful, sustainable changes in the way we do our collective business?

In the recent honoring of Jimmy Carter with a Nobel Prize, it was mentioned that he had steadfastly refused to join corporate boards. Too bad, actually.

It has always been too bad that we don’t have more mixing of missions – building great companies, for instance, within great communities. So, I say this, for all you corporate CEOs cast out of positive light and for the Jimmy Carters of the world, join in this good fight to build our places.

Sylvia L. Lovely is executive director and CEO of the Kentucky League of Cities.
editorial@lanereport.com

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