Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 6, 1994 TAG: 9406070067
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And they have done it in what must be record time - 11 weeks - for such a complex assignment. The strategic plan had to be citizen-driven and comprehensive, defining not only an overall vision for improvement in seven key areas, but specific objectives - along with who should be responsible for achieving them, when, at what cost to whom - plus benchmarks for measuring progress.
Participants had to scramble to get this done because the plan is, essentially, the city's application to win a federal Enterprise Community designation for seven census tracts in Roanoke's center - reaching into all four quadrants - where the poverty rate is 25 percent or higher. City Council receives the report today, and must approve it today if the application is going to meet state and federal deadlines.
Which is a little startling, considering the number and detail of specific goals, which cannot possibly be considered individually on such a tight timetable. But the specifics are not for the council to decide, and that is the aspect of this planning effort that is intriguing. Though the city administration initiated and organized the writing of it, this is not a city plan.
It is a community plan. If adopted and implemented, it would draw upon the resources and expertise of the city - and also of nonprofit agencies, private enterprises and community residents who all have a stake in Roanoke's prosperity. As for financial commitments, the plan calls for 85 percent of the city's Community Development Block Grant money to go toward carrying out the goals, and an agreement to share the cost of staffing a two-person, independent Community Development Corporation.
The emphasis on the latter is "share." The CDC would not be a new city department, or under the control of an existing city department. It would answer to a board of directors probably made up heavily of neighborhood residents, along with members from city government and the major nonprofit agencies that serve the poor. The CDC would depend not only on city resources to accomplish its goals, but on federal and state grants and assistance from nonprofit agencies and the private sector.
Significantly, it would work not on top-down plans drafted in city hall, but on the goals identified by the more than 175 residents who volunteered to participate in writing the 10-year blueprint for progress. The task forces that were formed would continue as advisory committees if the CDC is created. After their hard efforts, members agreed they wanted to continue to have a say in and work toward the plan's implementation.
Reaching into the neighborhoods, the blocks, the homes of these targeted areas for talent and ideas and enthusiasm is a promising plan for getting beyond the planning and on to the doing.
by CNB