DATE: Sunday, May 11, 1997                  TAG: 9705110042
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:   74 lines

ON A SATURDAY, NORFOLK PLOTS TO BRING POWER TO THE PEOPLE

They could have been playing golf, relaxing at home or doing the dozens of things people do on a sunny Saturday morning in May. Instead, 30 civic leaders and city officials huddled in a windowless room for four hours, writing on flip charts and talking about ``outcomes'' and ``performance measurement.''

Sound deadly dull?

Not if you pay taxes, or care about how well you live.

Saturday's meeting could be Norfolk's first step toward giving citizens more control over efforts to reduce crime, improve neighborhoods, create new jobs, lower school dropout rates and tackle any number of problems residents identify as important.

The gathering at Norview Recreation Center was part of a nationwide effort to train citizens how to measure whether local government officials are meeting the needs of the community. The program also is designed to help residents gauge their own work - through civic leagues, volunteer groups or churches - to better the neighborhoods.

During Saturday's workshop, for example, some said the city's success in improving neighborhoods could be measured against the number of boarded-up and vacant buildings, the number of abandoned vehicles, and such things as litter, street lighting and the condition of streets and sidewalks.

One idea for sprucing up neighborhoods: Get schoolchildren to adopt them, plant trees and clean.

``You have businesses and Navy ships adopting schools, and we feel this would motivate kids and their parents to take pride in their school and in their neighborhoods,'' said Skip Butler, president of the Oakdale Farms/Denby Park Civic League.

Norfolk and Virginia Beach are among 44 communities with populations greater than 200,000 participating in the national three-year project, overseen by the National Civic League, the International City and County Management Association and the Urban Institute. Virginia Beach participants have not yet met.

For Norfolk, the exercise reflects a burgeoning attempt by city officials to increase citizen involvement in setting priorities.

In part, the shift is political. The city ward system, forced into being by a lawsuit in 1992, has transformed civic leagues into formidable forces at the voting booth.

``They have to turn this way because of the power that civic leagues harness - they are the voices and the votes,'' said Calvin Durham, president of the Lindenwood/Cottage Heights/Broad Park Civic League.

James Janata of East Ocean View, chairman of the Ward 5 Partnership, a coalition of civic leagues and community activists, said: ``I think that, philosophically, the city is realizing they need to involve citizens, and involve us early enough to affect the outcome.''

As communities are forced to do more with less, citizen partnerships are becoming essential, officials said.

``It's going to become a part of how we do business,'' Shurl Montgomery, an assistant city manager, said Saturday.

Vice Mayor Herbert M. Collins Sr. said: ``The decisions have to come from you all and trickle down to us, rather than the reverse.''

But that could get dicey. Many residents, for example, contend that the city should spend more on neighborhood improvements and less on redeveloping downtown, a pet priority of past City Councils.

``The question I have is whether the city is really going to turn over more responsibility and power to citizens,'' Janata said.

Karen Derrick Davis, senior technical assistance specialist with the National Civic League in Denver, Colo., said the goal nationwide is for communities to learn from one another, from stemming crime to improving school test scores.

Blaine Liner, director of the State Policy Center for the Washington-based Urban Institute, said the advent of computer technology makes it possible for communities to track trends and measure the success of programs.

Liner said the Urban Institute is working with government officials in the 44 communities to develop a database to compare their performance in four areas: police, fire, neighborhood and administrative services.

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