If your mayor and city council members are heroes, not hydras, your hometown can be visionary
“HEROES VS HYDRAS” SERIES
This fifteen-part series introduces you to the heroic partners you and your community will require to survive and thrive during pandemics and economic disruptions. The articles also provide tips on avoiding the three-headed hydras of apathy, envy and fear, those people in positions of power who are fighting to keep a broken status quo.
We can, if guided by collaboration, data and technology, rethink how to leverage the power of cities to ensure health, safety, education and economic stability. The alternative, of course, is a zombie apocalypse.
Your Mayor and City Councilors
When history books are written about the era of the pandemic called “The Great Reset,” mayors and city councilors will be viewed as the local heroes who made possible the transition from “the before time” to the “Everybody thrives” time.
I am truly optimistic that with the right amount of educating and mobilizing, city government can be transformed into an engine for community resilience and economic health for all the communities within a city’s borders.
I strongly recommend that you, yes even those who have never met a mayor or visited your city’s website, put considerable energy into connecting with your local leaders. City hall is positioned perfectly to ensure the ten vital services for surviving and thriving. As I write about incessantly, city government does not have to fund any vital services, it just needs to make sure they are operated well by partners in the public and private sector.
A hypothesis we can explore together
I have not, in five years of advocating for a citywide system of care (done in collaboration with the county) had any elected local leader disagree with the following hypothesis:
City residents can increase their health, safety, education and job readiness by having easy access to ten vital services surviving and thriving, including medical care, mental health care, food security programs, housing security programs, transportation to vital services, early childhood learning programs, fully-resourced schools, youth mentors and job training.
In this era of chaos, you can find city leadership eager to understand their very new role in a post-pandemic society. They know how vulnerable everyone is because they have been wearing face masks, standing in line to buy a loaf of bread as talk of hoarding vital goods went viral on social media. Local leaders understand when people get desperate the guns come out and restaurants get broken into. In an economic free fall, city leaders won’t have to be convinced that ensuring the services for surviving and thriving is a good thing. The dialogue will be about how a city uses its leverage to get all the players (service providers from ten sectors) in the city playing nicely with one another.
The City Department of Survival
As I offer tirelessly in meetings with city leaders, ensuring vital services is not necessarily an ask for bigger city budgets or more taxes. As local governments ponder furloughing city workers and cutting entire city departments, I still say we can save money by having one entity within city government (The Dept. of Surviving?) ensuring all the players in the city, including businesses, foundations and various county, state and federal projects, collaborate. Am I talking about unprecedented cooperation on a citywide level? Yes. Am I asking the three-headed hydras to take a break from obstructing progress? Absolutely. I have shared lattes and long Saturday afternoon talks with heroic city leaders with the skills to make such collaboration happen.
How do I meet my mayor and city council person?
Like your county commissioners, city mayors and council members are your neighbors who understand that meeting with residents — constituents — is part of the job. I believe that more and more, local leaders are seeking to address disparities and need support from the public to do so. Especially in a pandemic and economic disruption, local leaders are seeking solutions. All local leaders want their city to thrive and we get to that goal with a seamless city system of surviving and thriving services, along with a focus on economic development.
Bottom line
Engage with local heroes and avoid the three-headed hydras. Vote locally and wisely as our mayors and council members have a significant impact on our public health and safety through budget priorities. In between elections, focus on building relationships with all city workers, from firefighters to city managers. All can be valuable and visionary allies as we collaborate to make each city truly family-friendly and economically vibrant for all residents of all ages.
The future is what we make it. Join the evolution.
Please excuse any typos as I construct an article at 3am on only one cup of Joe. These stories are mine and mine alone. I do not represent any organization here. If one of my illustrations looks like a real human or three-headed hydra, that’s total coincidence. Words and images ©Dominic Cappello but share with everyone you know. Any questions? The future awaits: www.tenvitalservices.org
