Author, Citizen,
Potential Mayor
If you say you’re running for mayor, you’ll get people’s attention. And I want your attention. We have a serious project in the works, it needs your help, in fact, you’re an integral part of this project.
Ten years ago I was a semi-public persona. I hosted a live television call-in show for three hours every week, wrote a newspaper column which ran in four papers,and was fortunate enough to know what seemed like every resident in Erie and Niagara counties by name. It was a great time and I enjoyed it immensely. Although I stepped away, got an MBA degree and worked for some great organizations, the calls from people offering comments about the community never stopped. I’m still getting calls ten years later.
If there was any crumb of success to the TV show or newspaper columns and it’s subsequent feedback it was that together, we were seeking an answer to one question: How do government, business and people fit into the puzzle that makes something a community?
Because people never stopped calling, I’ve never stopped thinking about how we piece together the perfect parts that become a vibrant community. And since my greatest gift is being curious, I genuinely want to know what others think would make a perfect community. If you take to heart the old saying that all of us are smarter than any of us, then we need to coordinate the thoughts and idea’s of everyoneand direct that towards a common purpose.
There is a formal name to this type of discussion andit’s called Civics.Why we bond together into a community is settled science, but how it works in practice is ignored. We discuss the big stuff but not the little daily stuff. Economists call this normative and real thinking. Normative being what we wish were the case, and real being, well, what really happens.
It’s the perfect time to turn civics on its head. To get civics out of the dusty textbooks and into our daily lives. The textbooks are the normative, we need to pull the curtain back on the real.
Niagara Falls may be the most perfect incubator for a civics-in-action experiment. It’s got every economic tool at its disposal to become a vibrant city, a virtual cash machine for government, and a garden of eden for people who want to live in paradise. I am not kidding. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that all the necessary ingredients are in place for an eden beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, and I know there are other people who have the answers. I’m setting out on a journey to find those people, get them to talk, take their idea’s to heart, and introduce them all to each other.
In Niagara Falls, the talent pool is worldwide, the economic tools are plentiful and the location is perfect.
I needed to open this columnby saying I’m running for mayor and I need your help – because that’s where our brains are wired today. We’re a reality TV show culture with a thirty-second attention span, and running for mayor instantly paints the picture of civics in your mind. Obviously I’m not running for Mayor, but I do need your help. Someone will be elected mayor and good for them. They’ll have worked hard for it and they desperately need our support and deserve our respect. But for the rest of us, we shouldn’t consider this reality TV. There is gold in this city – no mayor can mine it alone.
Elections are strange and necessary things. We should use this time – the time when everyone is talking about what they want out of the next mayor – as a time to focus the discussion. As a time to have an inner reflection not on any particular candidate, but on the city in general.
For the next five months I’m going to be talking to people specifically about Niagara Falls. Asking what people’s expectations for the future are; what the past was like, and whether anyone thinks, as I do, that it’s got all the tools to be much more than it currently is. I could be horribly wrong. Some very smart people have told me that Niagara Falls is simply what it is, and can be no more, and possibly less. I was christened a Catholic and given the patron saint Thomas to watch over my life. He was more commonly known as doubting Thomas. I said earlier I was curious. But that is just a polished way of saying I hew to the tenants of my patron saint. I don’t believe anything until I see it for myself, and I don’t believe the Falls is an accident. I need to know why it is what it is, and whether it can be more.
I’ll be reporting those discussions in the pages of this newspaper. Because intelligent, passionate and plugged-in people read newspapers. This discussion needs to play out in public. We can’t keep our experience or idea’s secret any longer. We need to confront our demons and dreams openly and honestly if we’re to have a valid assessment.
Where we go months from now is anyone’s guess. As someone once said, we’ll know when we get there.
THE CIVICS TAKAWAY
Civics is a long process, true civics is ongoing, it’s like living life, if you want a life fulfilled you do every day, every week, every month, every year best you can. Civics is a commitment, but it has to begin somewhere. We’ll start with the first steps. A 360 review is where our journey begins, we’ll talk about that next.