Otis White

The skills and strategies of civic leadership

What Smart Mayors Can Learn from the Turnaround of Central Park

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Of all the urban turnaround stories of the past 50 years, none is more impressive to me than the restoration of New York’s Central Park. When I got to know Central Park in 1973, it was sliding into urban wasteland. Vandals had wrecked its buildings and defaced its statues. Every surface was covered in graffiti, even its rocks. Trails were overgrown with invasive shrubs, and the park’s magnificent meadows had been trampled into dust bowls.

And, then, of course, there was crime. In 1981, police recorded 781 robberies in Central Park, but that was surely only a fraction of what took place there. Many victims did not bother to report crimes. Even the cops who patrolled the park did so only in the safety of two-officer cars.

If this is still your image of Central Park, then you owe it a visit. The 840-acre park, whose first section opened to the public in 1858, has been returned to its original beauty. People are using it in record numbers (there were 43 million visitors last year), but no longer abusing it. The trails are inviting and the grass is lush and green again. And as one who has walked across it recently, I can report it is as safe as any place in the city.

So how did this great turnaround happen? There were many factors, but the most important was that New York found a way of managing public spaces through shared responsibility. Founded in 1980, the Central Park Conservancy was the first nonprofit to take the lead in restoring and managing a major city-owned park. Since then, scores of similar organizations have sprung up around the country, from the Balboa Park Conservancy in San Diego to the Piedmont Park Conservancy in Atlanta.

If you’re thinking of starting a nonprofit like this in your city, I have good news. The founder of the Central Park Conservancy, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, recently published a memoir, “Saving Central Park,” that will take you inside the Conservancy’s amazing success. You’ll learn Rogers’ “three Ps”: “patience, passion, persistence.” You’ll discover the value of a vision. In her case, it was a desire to return the park to its 19th-century design. And you’ll learn why a detailed plan of restoration is important for guiding staff and raising money. (It gave the Conservancy, Rogers explains, “the equivalent of a donor shopping list.”)

These are valuable things to know if you’re starting such a group. But I’d like to turn things around and ask what local-government officials could learn from the Central Park experience. If a group of citizens wanted to form a group to restore a park in your city, what should a smart mayor do? 

The first thing is to recognize what nonprofits are good at and where they are weak. Their strengths are their focus, inventiveness, and ability to raise money and muster volunteers. 

And weaknesses? They’re not good at managing public perceptions. At one point or another, it seems, the Central Park Conservancy angered nearly every group claiming an interest in the park, from birdwatchers to tennis players. And when it did, it was vulnerable to the “who appointed you?” charge. Lesson: A smart mayor will coach nonprofits on politics and occasionally bail them out of controversies.

Not surprisingly, in the case of Central Park’s renaissance one group with a high level of suspicion was city parks employees. Had the Central Park Conservancy not started when it did, as the city was still on the edge of bankruptcy, it is hard to imagine that the parks department would have ever welcomed the nonprofit’s help. Lesson: A smart mayor will spend time counseling city employees on the value of strong outside partners, because all they will see at first are threats.

Finally, a smart mayor will be patient because strong nonprofits aren’t born that way. They become strong over time, as they accomplish things, learn from their mistakes, recruit a strong board and staff, and find their vision and voice.

So a smart mayor will give a fledgling conservancy some space to grow. The Central Park Conservancy worked for 17 years with nothing more than a handshake agreement with three mayors. Only in 1997 did the city feel confident enough to turn the keys of the park over to its staff. Today, every worker in Central Park, including city employees and Conservancy staff, reports to the Central Park administrator, who happens to be the president of the Conservancy. (Important to note: The Conservancy also supplies three-quarters of the park’s budget.)

That level of competence, public trust, and institutional strength isn’t built overnight. And a smart mayor doesn’t just give power away. But when she finds the right partners, she’ll trade power for results.

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by gigi_nyc licensed under Creative Commons.

How Odd Couples, Complementary Needs, and Chance Can Change Cities

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On a Sunday morning a few weeks from now, the 47th running of the New York Marathon will begin on Staten Island as 50,000 runners and wheelchair athletes thunder over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn. They’ll loop through Bay Ridge and into Williamsburg, then cross into Queens like an invading army. They’ll begin thinning out in Long Island City before heading into Manhattan across the high-arching Queensboro Bridge (the heartbreak hill of New York marathoners).

In Manhattan they’ll turn right and head north until they reach the Willis Avenue Bridge and cross into the Bronx, where they’ll basically make a U-turn back to Manhattan. The rest of the 26.2-mile run will be, comparatively speaking, a breeze, through Harlem, into the Upper East Side, with a triumphant finish in Central Park. The world’s best runners will finish in under two and a half hours. Mere mortals will take a while longer.

It’s an amazing spectacle. And if you’re lucky enough to see it (or better yet, participate in it), you may wonder: Where did the inspired idea of running a marathon through five boroughs and all these neighborhoods come from? And what does it tell us about how things like this happen in cities?

Answer: It came from a meeting in 1975, where two people found a way of connecting their entirely different needs in a way that created not just a common solution but a sensation. The central figures were Percy Sutton, the Manhattan borough president, and Fred Lebow, head of the New York Road Runners.

The two could not have been more different. Sutton was a polished lawyer and politician. Lebow was a Romanian refugee who made money in New York’s garment district before falling in love with long-distance running. Sutton knew power; Lebow knew showmanship. In short, they were the odd couple.

Their needs, too, were completely different. During one of New York’s worst years ever, Sutton was looking to change the narrative about his city, to give it something hopeful in the Bicentennial year of 1976. (He also hoped to become New York’s first black mayor.) Lebow wanted something to distinguish New York’s marathon from the much older and better known Boston Marathon. At the time, New York’s race was run entirely inside Central Park, with runners dodging cyclists and families pushing strollers.

What brought them together was a misunderstanding. Lebow and others were talking about running the marathon in the streets (as Boston’s was). By the time the idea reached Sutton, it had somehow become a race through every one of New York’s boroughs. Sutton was intrigued by the idea; Lebow, once he heard what was on the table, was horrified. (The cost, the logistics, the likelihood that something would go wrong . . . this was a crazy idea.)

And here’s where the magic happened. Once they sat down and started talking, the two men found answers to every objection. And more: They found greatness in the idea. This wasn’t just a partial answer to New York’s image problems or a way to make the New York Marathon distinctive. This was a way of creating a spectacle that could rival 1945’s V-J celebrations in Times Square . . . and, if successful, could be held every year.

Their relationship held Sutton and Lebow together as they worked through the security, logistics, organizational, and cost issues. But the opportunity of a great civic spectacle became their driving force.

If anything, the New York Marathon has grown beyond anything Sutton and Lebow could have imagined: it’s a showcase of great runners (and tens of thousands of average ones) and great urban neighborhoods, an economic and tourism boost for the city, an irresistible draw for the news media, and a civic celebration. But it also is an illustration of how legendary civic projects come about: when odd-couple leaders find ways of connecting their needs and creating solutions that become greater than the problems they began with. You see it in the origins of Atlanta’s Beltline project and the reinvention of Denver’s Union Station.

There is no way to plan for these things. Having an open door and lots of relationships helps. So does having a creative mind that can connect needs in creating solutions. But luck plays a role. How else can you account for the fact that, had Percy Sutton not misunderstood Fred Lebow’s original idea, we would not today have one of the world’s greatest athletic events and urban celebrations?

A version of this posting appeared on the Governing website.

Photo by Peter Miller licensed under Creative Commons.

Why Patience Is a Virtue in Civic Work

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The Grand Coulee Dam in eastern Washington State is a marvel of engineering and one of the world’s most successful public projects. It is the single largest producer of electricity in the country and one of the largest concrete structures in the world. It was begun in the depths of the Great Depression as a New Deal project and began producing hydroelectric power—and lots of it—just months before Pearl Harbor. Because it produced so much power so cheaply (it cranks out enough today to electrify the Seattle area twice over), many give it some credit for winning World War II since Seattle needed a huge power source during the war years for airplane production. And get this: It was actually designed and built under budget. In 1933, when the project started, the estimated cost of the dam was $168 million. It was completed for $163 million.

So, if you are looking for a well-conceived, well-designed, well-managed government project, you need go no further than the Grand Coulee Dam. It’s a little surprising, then, to learn that the idea of the Grand Coulee Dam took shape in . . . 1918. It was then that a group of leaders in eastern Washington found the exact spot for a major hydroelectric dam and conceived its purpose and benefits (cheap power and irrigation for the parched countryside) 15 years before construction started and 22 years before it began producing power.

Why? For the reasons any experienced civic leader knows: Great ideas don’t sell themselves; the barriers to change—any change—are high; and sometimes it takes a crisis to motivate decision makers. And, yet, when the right moment comes along, bold ideas seem almost to leap off the shelf. Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in March 1933. Immediately, he and his advisers scoured the country for big public-works projects that could be started in a hurry. One of the first they found—and by far the largest—was the Grand Coulee Dam.

This time lag between concept and acceptance (often followed by frenetic action) is so common that economist Milton Friedman once offered some advice to those who despaired about change, especially his fellow conservatives:

There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

And it’s not just at the federal level that this lag occurs. Many people know that New York revolutionized police work in the mid-1990s by adopting the “broken windows” theory of social disorder. (Briefly, the theory holds that by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes such as littering, graffiti, turnstile jumping, public urination, and so on, you will head off major crimes. The name comes from the idea that, if a building has one window that’s not repaired, vandals will soon break all the windows.) Here’s the surprise: The theory was published in 1982 and thoroughly discussed at the time. It took 15 years for “broken windows” to get its high-profile test.

In Washington, D.C., there’s a mixed-use development going up on the site of the old Washington Convention Center at New York Avenue and 14th Street. It’s a big project: condos, apartments, offices, shops, and restaurants, packed into 10 acres. Sounds great until you learn that the city has been working on getting something at that site for almost two decades. Most of that time, officials knew they wanted a mixed-use facility—they even chose the developer in 2003—but one delay after another postponed it.

Given this sometimes long and frustrating delay between idea and execution, what should civic leaders do? Five things:

  • Don’t get frustrated. Ideas are often formed in a burst of energy and creativity and then . . . nothing. But simply knowing that the road ahead is likely to be long may help you keep spirits up. If an idea is a great one—if the benefits to the community are obvious—then it will find its moment. Be patient.
  • Keep talking about the idea and refining it. Use this fallow period to prepare your idea and prepare others for your idea by coming up with new ways of illustrating its benefits. If it’s a new museum or a streetcar, how many ways can you help people see the museum and its collection or experience the sensation of moving on rail?
  • Build a committed group of advocates. This is the other thing you can do during the fallow period. The social media allow nearly unlimited ways of keeping the converted in conversation – and converting new people. Use them.
  • Watch for changing circumstances that may allow the “politically impossible” to become the “politically inevitable,” to use Milton Friedman’s words. It could be a crisis, a change of leadership in a key agency or government—or both. And when it happens, bring your new idea and your growing list of supporters to the new leaders’ attention immediately. If FDR had learned about the Grand Coulee Dam idea in 1934 instead of 1933, chances are it would never have been built.
  • Search for a work-around.

The last point bears a little explanation. Sometimes bold new ideas can be presented as, well, not so bold. In fact, even the biggest changes in cities can be offered up as small and safe—if they are presented as experiments. This is how Mayor Michael Bloomberg has remade huge parts of New York, building bike lanes, closing Times Square to traffic, allowing “pop-up” restaurants on city sidewalks, and so on. If he had presented any of these as bold new city policies (which they eventually became), opponents would have killed them.

So how did he do it? He offered them as “pilot projects,” experiments in a small area for the purpose of observation. In part he did this because it allowed the city to do things without going through the cumbersome and delay-prone public review process. But Bloomberg is also an astute observer of human (and political) nature. Had he proposed narrowing hundreds of New York streets for bike lanes, the howls of protest would have drowned out the idea, all of them predicting economic and physical gridlock. But by doing just a few blocks at first, then a few more, then a few more, then a lot more, the mayor and his staff proved that even the busiest New York streets could accommodate cyclists, motorists, and truck drivers—and be more humane for it.

Bloomberg has done this repeatedly over his three terms in office, quietly making small changes that paved the way for big ones. Often, by the time the larger ones are made, controversial changes aren’t controversial any longer. One of his critics, looking at the mayor’s use of pilots to pave the way for change, told the New York Times, “It’s masterful.”

You may be able to offer your change as bite-size pieces, or maybe not. It’s hard, for instance, to build just part of the Grand Coulee Dam and use it as a demonstration project. But whether you offer your great idea as a series of small steps or one long stride, the same advice applies: Be patient.

Photo by Jeff Hanway licensed under Creative Commons.

Planning Phase: The Slog of Civic Projects, and Why It’s Critical

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In a series of postings, we’re exploring how conscious change happens in communities. If you haven’t read the first posting in this series, please take a moment to do so.

In a time when many wonderful parks have been built, New York’s High Line may be the most wonderful of all. It’s a park that runs above the street and through buildings on Manhattan’s west side. If you climb the stairs and walk the portions that are completed (it will eventually be a mile and a half long), you’ll see something at once modest and spectacular. The modest part is the park itself, a narrow trail edged with plants and trees with resting areas along the way. The spectacular part is the setting: a park in the sky, wending its way through post-industrial New York. The reviews, as you can see in this video, have ranged from glowing to awestruck.

But my interest is not in the park itself. It’s in the project—the road the High Line traveled from a pair of neighbors looking up and seeing potential in an old elevated track until its opening in June 2009—and what that journey tells us about the second phase of our map of community change, the planning phase.

Background: In 1999 two men, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, attended a neighborhood planning meeting on the future of the abandoned rail line known as the High Line. Some landowners wanted it torn down to make way for new developments. David and Hammond, who did not know one another, came with another idea, that you could turn this elevated freight line into . . . something else, some kind of community asset.

Their ideas were vague. They thought about a park of some sort, but what kind of park could you build on a narrow set of elevated railroad tracks? And David and Hammond hardly seemed the type to turn vague civic ideas into reality. David was a writer who specialized in travel articles for glossy magazines. Hammond was a consultant to business startups. Neither had run a nonprofit, managed a park, or had any serious contact with government at any level. They came to the meeting with hopes of volunteering for a nonprofit—any nonprofit—that would make the High Line into a community asset. What they learned was there was no such nonprofit. So, pretty much on the spot, David and Hammond decided to do it themselves.

If you’re following this on the map of community change, we’re at the very start of the discussion phase, with the recognition of a need. Or, in this case, two needs. The first was David and Hammond’s belief that, in the crowded lower West Side of Manhattan, there wasn’t nearly enough open space. That part of New York takes in many old industrial areas (one neighborhood is still called the Meatpacking District). In the late 19th and early 20th century, New York didn’t build parks in places like that.

The other need was for quick action. If somebody didn’t act soon, they believed, the city would tear down the High Line and an opportunity for public space would be lost forever. (They were right. Less than two years later, the Giuliani Administration sided with the landowners and signed a demolition order for the High Line.)

A funny thing happened, though, once David and Hammond took up this project. It turned out—to their surprise and others’—that these two were uniquely equipped for a civic project of this magnitude and complexity. While they had no experience in leading an urban change effort, they had valuable and complementary skills. One could write well and knew some in New York’s social and philanthropic circles. The other was experienced in starting things, was at ease in asking people to do things (including giving money), and had a good sense of strategy. They were both quick learners, and each had an interest in art and design, which became important as the project moved forward.

It took three years of contacts, conversations, fundraising and strategic planning for David and Hammond to accomplish two things that ended the discussion phase and began the planning phase: First, they halted the demolition order with a lawsuit; second, they arrived at a workable solution for the High Line. You can view their workable solution online. It’s a 90-page document titled “Reclaiming the High Line,” researched by a nonprofit called the Design Trust for Public Space and written by David.

It’s an interesting document for three reasons. First, it’s beautifully designed. It had to be because it was aimed at multiple audiences: the political and planning communities that had such a big say in what would happen to the High Line; the community nearby, which at that time had barely any idea of the High Line’s potential; and possible donors who needed to understand the High Line’s vision.

Second, it’s modest in spelling out that vision. While it makes a strong case that the old freight line should not be torn down, used as a transit line, or turned into a commercial development (a long, skinny retail area, perhaps?), it doesn’t say it ought to be a park, either. It simply says its best use is as open space in a part of the city where there isn’t enough. In other words, the workable solution keeps its options open.

The third thing that’s interesting is who wrote the foreword: Michael Bloomberg, who by 2002 had succeeded Rudolph Giuliani as mayor. This gets to an important element in any change effort: luck. The High Line project was lucky in who got elected during its 10-year path from concept to ribbon-cutting, starting with the person in the mayor’s office.

Well, if a workable solution is at hand and a powerful new mayor wants it to succeed, that’s that, right? What else is there to do? The answer: The real work was just beginning. And this is my central message about the planning phase. Getting agreement on a workable solution is like getting everyone to agree on the design concept for a new house. Now comes the difficult, detailed work of hammering out costs and financing, drawing blueprints and mechanical plans, obtaining building permits, and bringing together a small army of independent contractors.

As David and Hammond explain in their book, “High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky,” even with the new mayor on their side, there was still a gauntlet of approvals to be run, from community planning boards (basically, neighborhood organizations that review developments) to the owners of the High Line (CSX, the railroad company) and the federal agency that approves transfers of railroad rights of way. And they had opposition: from landowners who had expected to build where the High Line stood, but also from residents who couldn’t see how the dark, peeling, scary elevated railroad could ever be anything but an eyesore. Finally, they realized a truth about government: that, even in a strong-mayor government such as New York has, the mayor doesn’t call all the shots. As Hammond writes:

(By late 2002) the Bloomberg Administration fully supported the High Line, but if they’d only endorsed it and done nothing else, the project would have died. Everything about the High Line was complex, and it had to pass through so many different agencies and departments. City government is like the human body: the head, which is the mayor’s office, may want to do something, but the body has a number of different parts that want to go their own way.

Everything hinged on three tasks that occupied much of the High Line’s planning phase: Coming up with a design for the park that would please politicians and neighbors and excite donors; dealing with the landowners’ objections; and figuring out how to pay for the construction and maintain this most unusual park in years to come.

If this doesn’t sound like exciting work, it wasn’t. This is the slog of civic projects, but it’s also why the planning phase is so important. Managing these details determines the success or failure of projects. And there were hundreds of details, from mapping the decision points and how to approach each of them to knitting together a coalition of supporters and funders. There were competing interests that had to be satisfied and intense politics. Oh, and they had to design a park unlike any in the world, and figure out how to pay for it.

What this phase requires from leaders are three things: the ability to plan (that’s why it’s called the planning phase), a mastery of detail (in an earlier posting, I called this the realm of “small-p politics”), and a willingness to ask for things. Throughout its development, David and Hammond asked people to do things for the High Line. Early on, they asked for information and advice (who owns the High Line, and how should we approach them?). Soon after, they asked for support and permission. In time, they asked for money. They started by asking for a small sums for printing costs and filing the lawsuit against the demolition. Eventually, they asked philanthropists and politicians for millions to pay for the park’s construction and maintenance. And they got it, in ways that surprised even them.

This brings us to the three elements of the planning phase that are in the map of community change: champions, narrative and strategy. I put them in the map as reminders. We’ve talked about one, strategy—that’s about mapping the decision points and making plans for each decision. This is the “inside game” of civic change, the political and bureaucrat checklist of approvals.

But there is always an “outside game” as well, and that’s where the narrative becomes critical because it speaks to citizens and potential supporters and donors. A narrative, of course, tells a story. It explains the need, why the need exists, the opportunity for addressing the need, how the solution was arrived at, and the future benefits of the change. Sometimes, the narrative has to change how people think about their community and its potential, something I call “reframing the community’s mind.”

And finally, there are the “champions.” Obviously, David and Hammond are the central figures of the High Line project. Without them, the freight line would be a memory and a remarkable asset squandered. But they aren’t the champions I have in mind; they’re the leaders and strategists. The champions are those whom David and Hammond asked for support who brought others along. Some were political champions who used their influence to win approval and gain government funding—people like Mayor Bloomberg, two successive city council presidents, New York’s senators and congressional representatives, and a host of people inside the bureaucracy.

There were also business and philanthropic champions, like media tycoon Barry Diller and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg who lent their names, made major financial gifts themselves, and hosted fundraisers for the High Line. Finally, there were celebrity champions who helped raise money and call attention to the High Line. An early celebrity endorser was actor Kevin Bacon, whose father had been an urban planner. Another actor, Edward Norton, also had a family interest (his grandfather was the pioneering urban developer James Rouse). When he read about the High Line project in a magazine article, he tracked down David and Hammond and offered to help out. As you can see from this video about the High Line, made before its opening, what Norton brought was public attention, which is what stars do.

The final box in the planning phase is “the plan,” but that’s a little too simple. In all likelihood, it’s not a single plan but a host of plans: one describing the project’s feasibility in great detail for decision makers, one speaking to the public about its benefits, one setting out the financing (for decision makers and funders), and one describing the design (if it’s a physical project). There will likely be internal documents that serve as a kind of project flow chart, laying out the approval process and decision points, and what each approval will require, so you can marshal the right supporters. Finally, your project may need interim funding, to print materials, commission studies and seek expert advice. You’ll need a plan for getting that funding along the way.

As I said earlier, this isn’t glamorous work; it’s a slog. The amount of detailed work and its complexity will test civic leaders’ commitment and attention spans. There will be victories along the way, and it’s important to broadcast them to keep your supporters’ spirits high. “One of the keys to the High Line’s success,” Hammond writes, “was in always showing progress, even if it was a really small step.” And sometimes there are big steps, like the day in late 2004 when Josh David opened an envelope and found a check for $1 million inside, from a donor he and Hammond had courted.

But make no mistake: This is the period when obstacles are met and overcome—or not. Do the planning phase right, and the next one, the decision phase, will be a triumph. Do it poorly and your chances of success are about as good as winning the lottery: theoretically possible . . . but practically impossible.

Photo of the High Line by Katy Silberger licensed under Creative Commons.

A Case Study in Small-P Politics

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In 1961, more than 110,000 people spent time in New York City’s overcrowded jails, and the number was rising fast. Many weren’t convicted of a crime; they were awaiting trial and couldn’t afford bail. Bail is basically an insurance policy. You (or a professional bail bondsman) put up something of value to insure you’ll appear for trial. Problem was, poor people, including many who worked in low-wage jobs, had nothing of value and not enough cash to afford a bail bondsman. So they sat in jail, often for months, before trials.

There was another way: A judge at arraignment (that’s the court appearance immediately after arrest) could release a defendant on his own recognizance—basically because, in the magistrate’s judgment, the defendant was unlikely to flee. But most of the arraignment judges in New York or other big cities knew nothing about the defendants other than their names and charges. And since no one wanted to release a defendant who might take off—or, worse, commit another crime—it was far safer to send people charged with theft, disorderly conduct and assault to the Tombs, as New York’s jail was called, than to risk headlines.

Enter a young man named Herb Sturz, who wondered if there weren’t a better, more humane way to treat poor people who had made a wrong turn—a way that could also save the city millions in jail costs. Sturz is the subject of a remarkable biography by New York Times reporter Sam Roberts titled “A Kind of Genius: Herb Sturz and Society’s Toughest Problems.” Briefly, Sturz figured out (by asking questions no one had thought to ask) how to create a better system of granting recognizance releases.

There isn’t space here to describe what Sturz learned along the way and how he learned it (but if you’d like to know, I recommend the book highly). It’s important to know, however, that Sturz worked with five objectives in mind:

  • Master the problem: Sturz had to know how the bail system worked and why it didn’t work better. Importantly, this wasn’t to point the finger but rather to know what had to be done to change it.
  • Build trust: As with most things in cities, authority to change the bail system was widely dispersed among judges, prosecutors, the police and politicians (who feared a scandal should criminals be released too easily). If anything was to change, all had to be convinced since any of them could have stopped reforms dead in their tracks.
  • Make an overwhelming case for change: Nothing important ever changes unless you can demonstrate why it should change, so Sturz had to show—from the standpoints of fairness, economy and public safety—that the reforms were better that the status quo.
  • Document the results: This was how he built trust. Sturz became a master of the “demonstration project,” which used controlled experiments to show that the reforms would do what he had promised. In the bail project, he and his team interviewed defendants and rated them for their suitability for recognizance release. Half who were judged to be suitable were recommended to a judge for release (and the judges overwhelmingly agreed); half were left in the old system (that is, some made bail but most stayed in jail). After a large number of these cases had gone to trial, Sturz could demonstrate that just as many released on recognizance showed up for their court appointments as those who made bail. More striking, far more of those who were released (on recognizance or bail) were exonerated or had their charges dismissed. (One theory: By being free, they had time to devote to their defenses.) The key was the rigor of the experiment, which made the results hard to deny even for those who could hardly believe them.
  • Respect authority: Even as he was asking judges and police officials to change how they worked, he did so in the most respectful way possible—by couching his ideas as something that would save money and make their lives easier. Sturz never sought the limelight. Over the years in a succession of reform projects, he always gave credit to people in authority and stepped forward only if someone had to accept blame. In doing so, he became one of New York’s most trusted authorities in the areas he cared about—criminal justice, substance abuse and improving the lives of the poor. (When Ed Koch became mayor in 1978, he made Sturz his deputy mayor for criminal justice.)

In summary, then, when Sturz arrived at a solution, it was holistic, systematic and efficient. It brought along those who might have stopped it. And it was delivered with the right reasons attached—not indictments of failure but opportunities for savings and public acclaim—and often with the promise that it would ease the jobs of those who had to implement the solutions.

As Roberts described Sturz’s quietly revolutionary reforms, they were so commonsensical in retrospect, they hardly seemed the work of a genius. But, he went on,

It took a kind of genius—someone wise and persevering enough to assess what was wrong, quantify the benefits of fixing it to all the stakeholders in the status quo and devising a simple, just, efficient solution.

Sturz, Roberts wrote, “spotted things other people hadn’t seen, even things that had been staring them in the face every day.” He continued,

He would pose questions that they hadn’t asked, even when those questions seemed mundane. And by peppering participants at every level with even more questions, by meticulously dissecting the responses, by crafting hypothetical fixes and subjecting them to challenging testing and experimentation, he tried his hand at transforming illusions into practical answers.

This is the heart of “small-p politics,” which I wrote about in an earlier posting. It’s small-p because it’s not the politics you normally think of, of campaigns and vote-trading. This is about listening, questioning, relationship building and, eventually solution building. It’s about dealing with obstacles and answering objections (“what if he flees?”) and signing up the permission-givers. It is the patient, unglamorous work of removing boulders and building walls. But this is what the workhorses of our communities do as the showhorses wring their hands.

So what happened to Herb Sturz’s efforts to reform bail? Not only were his solutions adopted in New York, but they were taken up in Washington and by 1966 had become part of a major reform of federal bail procedures. Afterward, state after state adopted the recognizance release approaches that Sturz had pioneered in New York. “In sheer volume,” one New York judge wrote in 1966, “probably never before in our legal history has so substantial a movement for reform in the law taken place in so short a time.”

Photo by Troy licensed under Creative Commons.

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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