The Community Congress: A Plan for Our Neighborhoods

By Paul McGhee

Paul McGhee's plan to increase community involvement and citizen input.

With fifty-two community councils in our city, it is easy to see how regular visits to all can become difficult. This is unfortunate because City Hall should have more dealings with those citizens who are involved at the local level. That is why I have a simple plan for our neighborhoods -- The Community Congress.

I want to open up City Hall to the people, and one way is to establish a Community Congress that meets every month or two. The Congress will consist of Community Council Presidents or other volunteers. For our city to work together as a whole, we must encourage our communities to do the same thing. This is not additional, or bigger government, but a call for the existing government to collaborate and communicate more effectively.

I am open to collaboration, and I invite any politician to be involved in this process. I do have some ideas for how such a Congress might be organized, and while this may be subject to change I'd like to share it so you can have some concrete ideas.

Firstly, 52 people at one meeting may be bulky, but I'd like all the community leaders to have a chance to see one another. So the first meeting will consist of everyone. I would like the community leaders themselves to develop some objectives or goals, addressing rather simple but important questions: How can our neighborhoods, through collaboration, catalyze improvement? What can we do to make our neighborhoods more friendly for small businesses? How can we work towards making our neighborhoods more safe? Also, at this first meeting, I would like to organize the Congress into smaller groups -- like a regional approach to the city, keeping those communities which neighbor one another in contact.

At the regular meetings after this introduction, smaller groups of leaders from neighboring communities would meet at City Hall to address their shared concerns, and to open lines of communication, both with one another and with representatives like me on City Council.

The next question may be obvious and important, but I think we must be open to this idea as an experiment. Some may ask, "What do you think this will accomplish? What actual things can get done this way?" I do not think I can predict the future. I know that my idea for a Community Congress does not cost any money, and it does not add to the size of government. It is a strategy for increasing community involvement at City Hall, and it works to empower the community councils themselves. I think great things can be accomplished when willing minds work together on common issues, and that is why I have crafted this proposal. When elected, I will work to establish the Community Congress.