Otis White

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A Reservoir for Civic Progress

August 7, 2019 By Otis White

If you want to see how civic projects can move communities forward, take a look at the Bridge Center in Baton Rouge, La. Or, at least, at what it will be when it opens next year.

The Bridge Center will be a place for people suffering from mental illness or substance abuse, and, in particular, an alternative to police and EMTs taking them to jail or an emergency room. This “third option,” as advocates like to call it, should bring a cascade of benefits: relieving overcrowding at emergency rooms and the county jail while dealing with the region’s addiction and mental illness issues more humanely and productively.

It will even be easier for the cops. Processing a prisoner at the county jail can take an hour’s time or more; waiting at an emergency room can take even longer. The Bridge Center’s aim: Complete the handoff in 15 minutes. And did I mention that it will save money? One study estimated that the Bridge Center will save up to $55 million in its first decade over incarceration or emergency room treatment. Little wonder then that nearly every public official, from the mayor to the county coroner, supported it.

But it’s also an example of how hard such things can be. The project began five years ago when a group of law enforcement officials, mental-health advocates, public-health experts, judicial-system leaders, and elected officials met to study Baton Rouge’s problems and identify solutions. Experts from around the country were brought in. There were group visits to a center in San Antonio, Texas, that became the Bridge Center’s model.

A clinical-design team outlined a series of services the Bridge Center could offer and how they could work together. A study suggested how the center might be funded. A nonprofit board was assembled that included the district attorney, the sheriff, mental-health care advocates, physicians, and other stakeholders.

With this mountain of testimonials, documentation, near-unanimous political support, heartrending stories of loved ones lost in the jail, and favorable news coverage, supporters asked voters in December 2016 for a modest tax increase to get the center started. They said no. It took two more years and a massive citizen-engagement effort to get a different result. Last December, voters in East Baton Rouge Parish, where Baton Rouge is located, finally said yes to a 1.5-mil increase in property taxes. Looking back, local officials are convinced the Bridge Center was worth the effort. “It was absolutely a step forward,” says Mayor Sharon Weston Broome.

Then again, local government leaders could afford to be patient with the slow pace. They have an ally, an organization that managed the Bridge Center proposal from first meeting through months of research and two referendums and will stick with it through ribbon-cutting: the Baton Rouge Area Foundation (BRAF), a community foundation that has evolved into a kind of research and development center for civic progress. BRAF’s fingerprints are on numerous projects, from a plan for downtown Baton Rouge to a nature center that takes visitors into a Louisiana swamp. It is trying to launch passenger rail service from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. And this is just a partial list.

By managing so many civic projects, BRAF applies the lessons of one initiative to the next. (One lesson: Don’t take referendums for granted.) Along the way, it has gained a reputation for getting things done, which opens even more doors. As foundation President John Davies says, “When the Baton Rouge Area Foundation asks people to come to a meeting, they will usually come.” And these advantages grow over time. While elected leaders come and go, BRAF Executive Vice President John Spain notes, “we are consistently here.”

Mayor Broome is a fan. “We are extremely fortunate to have a strong foundation like BRAF in our community,” she says. Still, she’s careful to add that the foundation doesn’t dictate to local government; it collaborates. As she sees it, the city and the foundation are “co-creators” of civic progress.

I’ve seen other organizations play this R&D role in a community, at least for a while. Typically, it is a business group such as a chamber of commerce. Occasionally, a university will step up. But most communities have no organized way of learning how civic progress works. They depend on extraordinary leaders (some elected, most not) to figure things out. And here’s the problem with that: In a lifetime, an extraordinary leader may take on one or two big civic projects before drifting out of civic work. When she leaves, her knowledge, skills, and relationships leave with her.

So you may want to ask: How does my community pass civic knowledge from one leader to the next? How do leaders build relationships? How do good ideas find funding? How do they survive disappointments?

If there isn’t an organization or at least a process for learning from successful projects and storing civic knowledge, good ideas may come like rain striking parched ground. They make a splash, raise hopes and then evaporate. Is it time to build a reservoir?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Charley Lhasa licensed under Creative Commons

How a Leader Assembles a Winning Team

April 4, 2019 By Otis White

The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus in Buffalo, New York is so successful today, it’s hard to imagine it didn’t always exist. But it dates only to 2002, when five institutions agreed to collaborate in planning their adjacent properties and recruiting others to join them on the 120-acre campus.

How successful has BNMC been? Matt Enstice, its president and CEO, recites the numbers off the top of his head: from 4.5 million square feet in 2002 to 9 million today; from 7,500 employees to 16,000; from five institutions to nine anchor institutions plus 150 nonprofits and companies. Fueling all this has been $1.4 billion in private and public investment.

So when Enstice and others began talking about the campus idea in 1999, everyone could see its merits, right? Well, no. The five original institutions, which included a hospital, a cancer research and treatment center, a university, an independent research institute, and a large medical practice, didn’t exactly oppose the idea but weren’t convinced it would work, either.

“It took a huge amount of volunteer time,” to get the medical campus idea off the ground, said one of the founders, Tom Beecher, an attorney and veteran civic leader. Assurances were made to the institutions: This would not be a governance organization and would not replace existing boards. Skeptical neighborhood organizations had to be convinced that these institutions would welcome their ideas. Foundations and political interests had to be persuaded.

And then there was the sheer weight of cynicism. You see, the idea of a medical campus in Buffalo wasn’t a new one in 1999. It had been tried before. Several times. At one point Enstice gathered all the failed plans. “I had a stack of plans up to my waist,” he remembers, “and I’m six feet tall.”

So how did Enstice, Beecher, then-Mayor Anthony Masiello, and consultant Richard Reinhard turn the idea of a collaborative, entrepreneurial medical campus from repeated failure to success?

They did it the way great civic leaders always do these things: They saw the way forward, creating not just a plan but a strategy. That’s a critical distinction. Lots of people, it seems, are good at creating plans, but it’s a rare leader who knows how to move from plan to reality.

This was the case in Buffalo in the 1990s, where many could see the city’s needs. (A big one: What could replace our fading manufacturing economy?) Some could even see solutions. (How about building around one of our bright spots, the city’s medical and biosciences economy . . . perhaps by centering it in a campus?)

But only an experienced and respected leader could see how to put the pieces together by assembling a team of planners, advocates, and strategists, anticipating the objections they would face, shaping the arguments, finding money for starting the effort, identifying early wins, and building momentum.

Fortunately, Buffalo had such a leader in Mayor Masiello. His talents lay in three areas: He had relationships with the right people, he knew how government worked and what it could do, and he was a natural cheerleader.  He also had a good sense of timing. He recognized that, in 1999, there were changes at the top of the medical community, so there was a little more openness to trying something new.

His first step was probably the most important one. Masiello picked the right people for this project. Beecher had deep relationships in the philanthropic and health care communities (he had chaired one of the hospital boards). Enstice and Reinhard, who had been Masiello’s chief of staff, were natural organizers with a deep understanding of communities. And Masiello was comfortable leading from behind, as cheerleader, early funder, and remover of political obstacles.

Along the way these four made smart tactical choices. Example: How they invited people into the planning effort. Their rule: You could participate only if you brought money, which they called “skin in the game.” This built commitment to the project and cleared out the time-wasters and political hangers-on who had bogged down earlier efforts. Another example: When they created the BNMC board, they suggested each of the large institutions have two representatives, one of whom must be the institution’s chair. Their thinking: While the CEO would be focused on the institution, the chair would have a longer, broader view of the city’s wellbeing. Again, it built commitment to the idea of a collaborative campus.

There were a half-dozen other things the team did well, from finding and exploiting early “wins” to involving the neighborhoods in exactly the right way. Knowing that Buffalo was, as Masiello puts it, a “seeing-is-believing town,” they led leadership tours of successful medical campuses around the country.

But none of this would have been possible without the decisions made early on by Mayor Masiello: When is the right time to get started? Who are the right people to lead this effort? What obstacles will they face? And what can I do to help them succeed?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo of the medical campus and downtown Buffalo, courtesy of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Seven Habits of Highly Successful Civic Projects

May 9, 2018 By Otis White

Incremental change is change by the inch, and it’s what wise leaders do over long periods. In his 12 years in office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg remade huge swaths of New York, rezoning 40 percent of the city, but he did it so quietly that few noticed at the time.

In his 31 years in office, Charleston, S.C. Mayor Joseph Riley had an even subtler impact on his city. Yes, there were big things he facilitated—the launching of the Spoleto arts festival, for one—but Riley’s true legacy is in the fabric of the city, the way streets were tended, buildings cared for, and parks placed. Under Riley’s long watch, Charleston became a national treasure.

Other longtime mayors have had that kind of impact on cities. Boston’s late mayor, Thomas Menino, once declared that “visionaries don’t get things done” and denied that he had a vision for his city. He preferred the term “urban mechanic.” But Menino’s steady tinkering with services and amenities made Boston gleam as never before.

So, yes, we need steady, incremental change. But, with apologies to Mayor Menino, sometimes we also need great leaps, the kind of visionary projects he disdained. This is especially so in cities that are depressed or dispirited, that need a change of direction or attitude.

So what is a great project? It can be anything that signals a new direction: a stylish convention center, a 21st century transit system, a signature downtown park, a beautiful riverwalk, an exciting arts center. One mayor described these things as “man on the moon” projects–efforts that are bold, visible, a clear break from the past, and undeniably successful.

I’ve studied great projects for years, tracing how they came to be, who supported them and at what point, the obstacles they faced and overcame, and why they ultimately succeeded. And I’ve noticed some common elements among these otherwise very different undertakings. Here are seven:

  1. Most great projects start outside city hall. That is, they begin with a citizens group or nonprofit that brings its idea to city hall. Smart elected officials aren’t threatened by these outside ideas; they welcome them.
  2. They depend on collaborations to succeed. This may be why so many successful projects start outside city hall. By the time the government is involved, partners are already in place.
  3. There’s something in the project that resonates with the public, even if it isn’t apparent why. This is why elected officials should ask those advancing a big project to take their idea to the public before asking for city hall’s support. After all, who knew New York needed a linear park 30 feet above street level before the organizers of the High Line project created a demand for it?
  4. The turning point is when a leader sees the way forward. This is where political leadership becomes crucial. A great project can grow organically but only to a point. For the project to succeed, someone in power has to figure out how to overcome its obstacles and structure the project for success. This can involve a small group, but in most cases it’s the work of a single experienced leader.
  5. In the structure that emerges, the city’s role remains limited. Average leaders seize control of projects, but great ones are comfortable sharing the wheel. That’s because they know that, if you lose the collaboration, you lose the energy, creativity, and resources that partnerships bring.
  6. As the project advances, other interests will support the project for reasons that are wholly unrelated to yours. This doesn’t mean the project has lost focus. It’s usually a result of the excitement the project is generating. So take this as a sign of success.
  7. When the project is completed, a whole new set of challenges will present themselves, and smart leaders will anticipate them as well. Nothing is sadder than yesterday’s great project that has fallen on hard times (say, New York’s Central Park in the 1970s). The time to think about long-term support is before the project is finished. Here again, collaboration is the key. After all, mayors come and go, and their interest in parks may wax and wane, but the Central Park Conservancy remains focused—and is here to stay.

Can a leader be both an incrementalist and a visionary? Well, yes, but it may be the wrong question to ask. A better question is, what does your city need at this time—a great project or steady progress? If the wind is at your city’s back, incremental change may be all it needs. But if the wind shifts, you may need something big and bold. When that happens, keep an eye out for ideas from the outside that arrive with a few good habits.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by M.V. Jantzen licensed under Creative Commons.

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About Otis White

Otis White is president of Civic Strategies, Inc., a collaborative and strategic planning firm for local governments and civic organizations. He has written about cities and their leaders for more than 30 years. For more information about Otis and his work, please visit www.civic-strategies.com.

The Great Project

Otis White's multimedia book, "The Great Project," is available on Apple iTunes for reading on an iPad. The book is about how a single civic project changed a city and offers important lessons for civic leaders considering their own "great projects" . . . and for students in college planning and political science programs.

For more information about the book, please visit the iTunes Great Project page.

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