Broadening The Dialogue 

We need to develop a positive vision for the future of the city of Santa Cruz. To do this, we need to build strong civic institutions that allow all sectors of the community to participate in creating it, and to feel empowered and invested in carrying the vision through to completion.

 Encouraging Civic Involvement 

This is about bringing government to the people, and people to the government--helping people be "civic", as opposed to "corporate" (to use Ralph Nader's parlance). The citizens of this city need to be in dialogue with each other and their governing institutions at the neighborhood level. To do this, we need to build civic institutions that allow formal participation in the process by all sectors of the community: business, residents, youth, etc. For business, I want us to create Neighborhood Business Improvement Districts (modeled on the very successful programs in Santa Monica that have helped create neighborhood directed urban beautification and neighborhood renewal projects), support and facilitate strong Neighborhood Organizations where dialogue can occur between neighbors and community businesses and governmental representatives, and through which city initiatives that directly affect neighborhoods can garner input before they reach the City Council or other city wide institutions - this way, we can pro-actively involve residents, so they don't feel like things are being imposed on them by bureaucrats in a distant city hall.

To bring government to the people, literally, I want to see City Commissions do pro-active outreach to the community; I want every commission to meet at least twice a year in some place other than their standard location - much like the CPRB did a with its meeting in Beach Flats earlier this year. This will make government more accessible to the community, and hopefully encourage greater citizen participation in advisory body meetings.

 Neighborhood Based Economic Development 

We need to broaden the scope of economic development in this city - it is utterly ridiculous that Santa Cruz is so economically dependent on the health of a few businesses along Pacific Avenue. If the stakes were not so high, there is a fair chance tha the dialogue about downtown could be de-escalated and less polarized. Our waterfront should be an economic engine that is equal to or greater than that of our downtown, and the two should be linked. The Boardwalk should be surrounded by a thriving pedestrian based commercial district and be reachable on foot from quality overnight accomodations. The waterfront area should be pedestrian friendly and linked with the downtown via logical foot paths, bicycle lanes, and pedestrian friendly public transit (trolleys and other systems suitable for just hopping on and off of).

Furthermore, the city has numerous neighborhood based commercial districts that could be thriving and integral parts of their communities, take traffic and development pressure off downtown, and provide the critical mass of pedestrians and foot traffic necessary to make impulse based public transit feasible between neighborhoods, the downtown and beach front. Properly marketed, these could also have distinctive personalities that draw out of town day trippers and residents from other areas of the city; with a functional impulse based public transit system, the traffic impact could be minimized. In fact, in a community with many thriving, decentralized commercial districts, overall traffic should decrease, and the proportion of trips taken on foot, bicycle and public transit should skyrocket. However - none of this will happen unless: a) the neighborhoods, both residents and businessess, are empowered to help create a vision they can buy into and b) we quit focusing exclusively on development downtown and large commercial projects as the exclusive means of creating economic growth (and thus city revenues).

Today, dialogue in this city is all about downtown, downtown, downtown, drugs in Beach Flats, downtown, downtown, drugs/violence/panhandlers downtown, and the occassional outraged complaint from neighborhood residents at the bureaucrats in City Hall ramming something down their throats...

We need to craft a vision for the City as a whole, just like we did for the downtown area after the earthquake. Our beachfront is critical to the economic and social future of this city--we need to focus our energy on facilitating development in Beach Flats that is appropriate to the area and the city as a whole, that supports and empowers existing businesses and residents, instead of displacing them, and that fits into a larger vision for the City as a whole.

 Green/Progressive Values In Action 

  • grassroots democracy - formal support for neighborhood/community-based business/resident empowerment at the lowest level possible.
  • decentralization - build human civic infrastructure across the city; use this to broaden the scope of civic dialogue and citizen involvement and create new avenues for civic participation and opportunities for development of new civic leaders; develop the entire city's economic and social infrastructure; incorporate all sectors of the community into the dialogue, empower them, and get them talking to each other about a vision for the city as a whole, instead of fighting over narrow sectarian interests.
  • ecological wisdom - distributed small scale economic development minimizes impact, maximizes use of existing infrastructure and reduces pressure for high profile developments that have significant ecological impacts; it encourages and facilitates the development of affordable housing, public transit, neighborhood based businesses and employment and stronger civic ties.

This city has a tremendous potential to become an even better place to live, work and play. Let's make it happen, together. Contact me at thomas@thomasleavitt.org with your ideas and feedback.

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