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Sunday, April 18, 2004

The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS AT THE TIPPING POINT: A ROAD MAP FOR RENEWAL

IDEAS

Necessity is the mother of invention. Cities change their ways because theyre hurting. So this is a perfect time for Dallas to survey its peers and cadge a few good ideas. The city should be scanning the horizon for what other cities are doing and shamelessly stealing it, said political scientist Royce Hanson, author of Civic Culture and Urban Change: Governing Dallas.
Story by Victoria Loe Hicks, Angela Shah, David Dillon and Tanya Eiserer

AN JOSE, Calif. When Ron Gonzales campaigned on the promise to be an education mayor, we all rolled our eyes and said, Yeah, right, political scientist Terry Christensen recalled. It was the fashionable thing to say. Now, six years later, city-school partnerships include 230 after-school homework centers and 190 recreation programs. The city pays nonprofit agencies to run these programs at city or school facilities.
primary schools just six years after it debuted as an experiment at one downtown elementary. Students can stay on campus from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., at no charge to parents, to enjoy clubs, sports and other activities. The state helps fund the project, which is run by community groups. On a bluff overlooking downtown, Rosa Parks Elementary School anchors a city redevelopment project. Within a few steps are the school, a city recreation center, a community-policing office and a nascent retail cluster, complete with a McDonalds and a Cingular Wireless store. The city planning group and the neighborhood are extremely active with the schools, said Cynthia Reed-Porter, a school district spokeswoman. They definitely have a vision. o o o PHOENIX BUSINESS. PARTNERS. Funny how those words go together. When it comes to economic development, the smart money is on cities that link up with their communities brightest, boldest entrepreneurs wherever they may turn up. In Phoenix, the most important guy to the economy moved here last year, said land-use lawyer Grady Gammage. That would be Michael Crow, the new president of Arizona State University. He came with a mission: to transform ASU into a major research university. His strategy includes partnering with the city to create a center for research in emerging fields such as biotechnology that can spin off jobs and other tangible benefits for Phoenix residents. He started talking, and people said, Hey, he sounds pretty good, Mr. Gammage said. Hes a risk-taker. He asked the Legislature for $60 million

Four hundred teachers have bought homes in San Jose with the help of interest-free $40,000 loans from the city. All but one of those teachers still teaches in San Jose. Nonprofit agencies under contract to the city are working with 10,000 parents, helping them be more effective participants in their childrens education. Mr. Gonzales Web page brims with photos of him visiting schools. Each year he recognizes those with the greatest improvements in student achievement. Although its impossible to trace the improvements directly to the citys efforts, in the last five years, schools in the San Jose Unified School District have improved their scores by an average of 11 percent on Californias Academic Performance Index. The lowest-performing schools have shown a 27 percent jump. Like Texas, California separates the functions of cities and school districts. Still, San Jose has scraped together $10 million a year to run its programs even in the midst of a technology bust more severe than Dallas. It does so because City Hall regards top-quality schools as part of San Joses economic development strategy. Thats why City Hall also spent $7.5 million in redevelopment funds to help renovate a downtown elementary school, and why it built a recreation center at a nearby middle school. In the evenings, the facility becomes a community center the first of its kind in the predominantly minority neighborhood. San Jose wants schools that operate around the clock, said Albert Balagso, the citys assistant director of parks, recreation and neighborhood services. San Diego is virtually there. Its 6 to 6 Program is offered at all

for research, and damn if they didnt do it. ASU and the University of Arizona even set aside their historic rivalry to help Phoenix compete to become home to the International Genomics Consortium. It will use the accomplishments of the Human Genome Project to engineer new medical therapies. With the universities, the state, private foundations and corporations contributing intellectual firepower and money, Phoenix landed the prize. The city broke ground in May on a $39 million downtown building, primarily financed through bond money, to house the consortium and another biotech research group. If Phoenix has a model, its San Diego, where the University of California created UCSD Connect, a program that brought together the researchers, lawyers, managers, venture capitalists and marketers needed to nurture baby biotech firms. We lust after what happened to San Diego, Mr. Gammage said. Fifteen years ago, San Diego was a resort where Navy guys retired. Now its rocketed past everyone. UCSD has more Nobel laureates than UCLA. To capitalize on its fortune and stay abreast of the competition, San Diego loans more money to small businesses than any other city in the country. Its economic development department has a $15 million budget and 100 employees. They are spending gobloads of money thinking about the future of their military bases, said Jeff Finkle, president and chief executive of the International Economic Development Council in Washington. When they built a baseball stadium, they built a community. Formerly a seedy sailors hangout, the Gaslamp Quarter has been made over into a 24-hour neighborhood of loft apartments, abundant nightlife and a new baseball stadium within walking distance of downtown. The city never slacks off, surveying residents about economic development and updating its strategy every two years. This helps the city to understand the connection between driving indus-

tries and the city general fund, said Hank Cunningham, the economic development director. This is about taxes and jobs. Up the coast in Silicon Valley, jobs once rolled in faster than they could be counted. Then, almost overnight, many of them disappeared. Thats when San Jose realized that it needed not only a plan but relationships with the companies that drive its economy. First, though, it had to figure out which companies beyond the developers whose business requires them to interact with the city those were. A series of painfully frank community meetings and interviews with corporate executives helped city leaders bridge a vast divide. When we sought the counsel of the CEOs, their reaction at first was: And youre here why? said City Manager Del Borgsdorf. There had been no prior strategic discussions. The plan that emerged is a sophisticated analysis of how the city can affect the local economy, starting with 15 initiatives to cultivate businesses identified as economic drivers. One outgrowth is a development Cabinet of CEOs who advise the mayor. Another is a list of San Joses top 100 companies large employers and major sales-tax contributors. Economic development staffers have essentially adopted the companies, treating them as a sales staff would treat its key customers. Silicon Valley is at an inflection point, said Kim Walesh, assistant director of economic development. We are no longer the center of the innovation universe. Were just one node in a global economy. o o o SAN DIEGO IN THE EARLY 1990S, San Diego found itself in the same unhappy boat with most of the nations other big cities: short of officers and awash in crime. Crime was really high, said John Welter, the former No. 2 chief in San Diego who now heads the police department in Anaheim, Calif. We were chasing our tails with the same staffing we have today of about 1.6 cops per 1,000 people.

Police commanders responded by pioneering the concept of problem-oriented policing. The strategy held officers accountable for identifying persistent crime problems and devising solutions. Some were as simple as painting over graffiti; others were as complex as an outreach program for the homeless. The police also realized that they could not do it alone. Over the last decade, the department assembled a veritable army of volunteers, from people who act as interpreters to seniors who wear uniforms and drive donated patrol cars on crime-watch patrols. Today, San Diego is widely considered a font of innovative policing strategies. Among the nations nine largest cities, only New York had a lower crime rate in 2003. Dallas continues to claim the dubious honor of having the worst rate, despite having 37 percent more officers per capita. We changed the culture and the philosophy of how we did business, Chief Welter said. Most recently, the city drew national attention and acclaim for its Family Justice Center, which brings together police, prosecutors and service providers to assist domestic violence victims. The federal government will spend $20 million to replicate the San Diego model in 12 other communities. In San Diego, weve had some leadership here that is willing to work outside the box, to take a risk. Its part of our culture to take a risk, said Lt. James Barker, head of the departments domestic violence unit. In Phoenix, meanwhile, the police department surveys residents every two years to help determine its long-term goals. Our planning is bottom-up instead of top-down, said former Chief Harold Hurtt, who recently became chief in Houston. Its kind of a rolling plan. Every 18 months, we update it. By being driven from bottom up, we think that were pretty close all the time to the issues that we need to be addressing within the organization. We dont have a lot of busy people working in different directions. We have busy people working in alignment to achieve the identified goals.